Epiphany
by walkingaftermidnight
Summary: Bella makes a painful mistake and must delve into the past in order to save her relationship with Jacob. As the pieces slowly come together she experiences a personal revelation, but will this clarity help her gain Jacob's forgiveness? Bella/Jacob NewMoon
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **

**Ok so this is my first ever fanfic. Please go easy on me! I've been working up the nerve to post this on here for a while now. **

**This is 100% Bella and Jake... with a bit of Charlie thrown in for good measure :) If you don't like these two together, I can pretty much guarantee you won't like this. Timeline is somewhere in the middle of New Moon after Edward leaves and Jake first phases, but I guess it could be AU since I'd like to imagine at the end of this story that Edward doesn't come back. **

**I wanted to write a story that allowed Bella to see just how selfish she is sometimes around Jake, and to give him a bit of a chance to get mad at her... but not for too long of course. **

**This was originally meant to be a one-shot, but I sorta got carried away. It will be, at most, a five-shot.**

**Rating: T just to be safe (some mild language).**

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**Epiphany**

My boots crunched against the gravel driveway as I raced for cover. I should have been used to the rain by now, having spent the past year in the Pacific Northwest, but at times like this, when it was icy and fierce and coming at me almost horizontally, my reaction was - as Charlie often told me - downright comical to observe. My always-sympathetic father claimed that one would assume I was being shot at by the way I ran for cover when I felt even the slightest drop. This was not only completely untrue but also rather ironic since he was the chief of police, and the only time he'd actually even _seen_ anyone attempt to escape heavy fire was during repeated viewings of _Lethal Weapon._ I guess that goes to show how dangerous our town was… at least to those who didn't know what I knew.

As I continued to hurtle myself onwards, I skidded ungracefully to avoid colliding with the rusty, gutted shell of an old hatchback that had obviously been discarded, emptied of all useable parts, its only purpose now being to block my route to safety. My inelegant shuffling sent pieces of rock clanging into the garage's steel front wall.

I practically dove across the threshold in the manner of a sprinter who was milliseconds away from winning Olympic gold: nose… forehead… shoulders… chest… arms flailing behind… and finally legs and feet… _Yes!!! A new world record ladies and gentlemen! _Breathing heavily and ruffling my hands through my soggy hair, I glanced around as my eyes adjusted to the dark… only to find myself alone. Where the hell was he?

It had been months since my world had fallen apart. Months of mindless wallowing and general zombie-like activity that had eaten away at my existence like a flame crawling across a piece of paper, leaving only nothingness in its wake. The emptiness I'd felt these past few months had been almost impossible to bear. Almost…

But that was why I was standing here, listening to the rain beat deafeningly against the corrugated metal roof of his shamelessly hand-constructed-from-scratch garage. I took a quick tour around the familiar small space where I'd been more than certain I'd find him, or rather his long legs sprawling out from underneath God-knows-what he'd decided to resurrect this time. I then noticed that the light was off, the radio was silent, and all of his tools were neatly packed away, their boxes stacked against the same wall where his old Gore-Tex jacket – the one he never wore anymore because he didn't have to - hung from its hood on a crooked nail.

I had resigned myself to one more scrambling trip into the deluge when suddenly I was swept up from behind. Two huge, warm arms encircled my waist and hoisted me upward, spinning me around, legs flailing in all directions. I screamed so loud I could have woken the dead.

He placed me on my feet again and I could hear his unbridled amusement as well as feel the rhythmic pulsating of his lungs convulsing against my back. "Shh-hhh-hhh-hhh…" he laughed, bringing his mouth down to my ear in an effort to calm my shrieking, but only making my heart beat faster… with irritation. I smacked at the dark, muscled forearm that held me in place. I felt his hot breath puff repeatedly through my hair as he pressed his face into the top of my head, still unable to keep his laugher in check.

"God damn it Jake, how did you get so good at sneaking up on people like that!?" I gasped as I brought my right hand up to pat his head, his chin now resting heavily on my shoulder. I could just barely make out his nose in my peripheral vision. He laughed again and released me, rotating me 180 degrees and straightening up to his impressive full height.

A few errant raindrops still glistened on the disheveled ends of his recently-cropped black hair, my hand having swept away the majority of the moisture a moment earlier. I wanted to brush off the rest but I knew I wouldn't be able to reach, and he didn't seem to mind anyways. He was half-clothed as usual, a pair of worn cargo shorts hanging low off his hips, flaunting his undeserved washboard abs. The boy ate more than any person, or animal for that matter, that I'd ever seen – and I'd been to the Phoenix Zoo on numerous occasions - and yet he was cut as though he spent 24 hours a day doing Navy SEAL training. I'd maybe seen him do one chin-up in the entire time I'd known him… and it was to haul himself up onto the roof to fix the TV antenna during an _Iron Chef_ marathon. He was the ultimate definition of unfair.

"Not all of us are as… obvious in our approach as you are," he smiled as he swept his arm from the general direction of the driveway to where I stood, hands on my hips, scowling in contempt of his unwarranted mockery. He was clearly implying that my unceremonious arrival had been loud enough to rouse him from whatever he'd been doing inside the house. Sleeping, no doubt.

"I was trying to get out of the rain…" I offered as a halfhearted explanation.

"Sure, sure. Here I thought you were just _that _excited to see me," he grinned cheekily.

"Well, my original plan _was _to see you, but _now_ I'm starting to think a nice walk alone in the rain sounds like a better idea."

My sad attempt at brushing him off fell flat. I made it two steps towards the entryway before his large, scorching hand clamped down on my shoulder. One corner of my mouth lifted ever so slightly. I hoped he didn't notice.

"Here," he said, pulling the idle jacket from its place on the wall, "go nuts." He dropped the hood onto my head. It came down so low on my eyes that I could barely see his hand gesturing towards the incessant downpour, inviting me to take myself up on what was sure to be a fabulous good time. The bottom of his jacket grazed the backs of my knees, and when I shoved my arms through the sleeves I had to struggle to roll them up about 4 times each, finally freeing my right index finger to prod him squarely in his sculpted chest.

"_Thank_ you [jab], I _will_ [jab]." I replied, my voice overconfident, my chin jutting upwards to allow myself to see his face. I felt, and surely looked, utterly foolish.

I spun around on my heel and proceeded to march purposefully back out into the rain, around the rusty car skeleton and up his long driveway. I could hear him splashing behind me, obviously making no attempt, as I had, to avoid the abundant puddles. I turned to face him abruptly, and he had to stop short to keep from colliding with me. The foot that he'd been leading with was submerged up to the ankle in murky water. He was wearing flip-flops, the cheap rubber kind that you get at the drugstore. I gawped at him appallingly.

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing!?" I shouted over the rain.

He lifted his dripping foot, shaking it out to the side like he was kicking away a very small, very rabid dog… or raccoon. I sniggered inwardly at the mental picture only to shake my head back to reality, refocusing my attention on his now beaming, triumphant expression.

"Making sure you don't get lost..."

The rain pelted off his bare copper shoulders as he stood there pretending that there was absolutely nothing amiss with this whole situation.

"…or y'know… maybe _I_ like walking in the rain too."

He raised both arms out to shoulder height, palms facing the sky, and flashed me his astonishingly white teeth before allowing his hands to drop with a thud, shoving them into the pockets of his shorts that had already become soaked all the way through. I could hear him whistling (_whistling!_) as he strode confidently around me and towards the road, beckoning me forward with a jerk of his elbow.

"Well, come on then!"

I rolled my eyes exaggeratedly at him, "You can't be serious, Jake. You're giving me pneumonia just _looking_ at you right now. I swear you won't be satisfied until I develop a nervous twitch." I angled my torso out over the small lake that was rapidly forming between us and snatched up his hand. He could have easily resisted my weak attempt at dragging him inside the house, but instead he lumbered complacently after me, undoubtedly satisfied that he'd managed to win this round.

We arrived dripping on the doormat inside his small, warm house. I removed the jacket and hung it on the adjacent coat rack. He kicked off his sandals and made to step out onto the kitchen linoleum.

"DON'T…" I barked, palms exposed to his chest with fingers splayed to arrest his progress, my shoulders hitched nervously up to my ears "… move."

I sighed heavily to relax my neck muscles, removed my boots, and padded over to where a dishtowel had been tossed haphazardly over the oven door handle. My overdramatic frustration caused me to whisk it theatrically by its corner, whipping myself on the arm in the process. "Ow…" I grumbled, rubbing the spot where my pale freckled skin was starting to redden. I glanced up sheepishly only to see him making a valiant effort to suppress his obnoxious laughter.

I stomped over until my face was about a foot from his chest. I stretched my hand up and roughly clamped it over the back of his thick neck, gripping hard and using almost all my strength to yank him down to my level so that he stood bent almost 90 degrees at the waist. Once again he submitted to my manhandling. I found his trust in me to be slightly endearing.

Letting go of his neck, I threw the towel over his dripping head and proceeded to dry his hair off with the same level of intensity I used on my own each morning after showering. I heard him whine lamely, "Hey, watch the ears… I _need_ those y'know."

I giggled, releasing him and throwing the now wadded-up towel at his chest. He caught it awkwardly just before it fell to the ground. My vigorous jostling of his head had caused his thick hair to now stick out randomly in every direction possible. It made him look sort of adorable, though I'd never actually tell him that for fear of bursting the balloon that was his already inflated ego.

"Finish the job, please." I commanded, turning around and crossing the kitchen once again to open his fridge and examine its contents.

"Don't even think about touching that leftover pizza," he warned from across the room, hopping on one leg as he dried the other, his back eventually slamming into the wall as he lost his balance, "that's mine…"

"Yeah, I'd better not steal your food, you might just starve to death." I shot a sardonic squint-eyed glare at him over my left shoulder, returning my attention to the fridge with a head roll that was mirrored by my eyes.

My hand was inches away from a lone granny smith that was perched between two take-out boxes on the top shelf, when his frantic voice nearly made me hit the ceiling.

"WAIT!"

What!? Was it poisoned or something? Was he really _that _possessive about his food?

"Wait, wait, wait, wait…" he looked serious as he jogged over to the fridge where I stood frozen in place sporting an expression of alarmed confusion.

He slipped his hands under my arms and lifted me all too easily from the ground, turning around and nudging the fridge door closed with his heel.

"What the…?" I managed to sputter as I gripped his forearms, twisting my head frantically from side to side, knowing but unable to actually _see_ where his shuffling feet were taking us. We reached the front door once again and he shouldered it open, not once losing his grip on me. He plunked me hastily outside, still under the cover of the porch overhang, and shut the heavy door right in my face.

I was flabbergasted. What the hell was this!? He wanted me to _leave_?

"I wasn't going to eat your damned pizza, Jake." I bellowed above the rain's steady thrumming.

"No! Just… Knock!" I could barely make out his muted command from behind the thick wooden door.

I closed my eyes and brought my fingers to my temples, squeezing lightly as if testing the ripeness of a mango_…Lord, give me the patience._

With successive flicks of my wrist I hammered the knuckle of my right index finger repeatedly in a quick staccato on the damp wood, stopping only when he finally reopened the door.

The look on his face was downright hilarious. It was like he'd entered a surprise party he already knew about, and was pretending to be shocked for the benefit of those involved. "Bella!" he cried, his intonation almost excruciatingly over-the-top, "I had _no idea_ you were coming!"

And with that he scooped me into his arms, face buried in my neck, hugging me like he always did when I arrived on his doorstep unexpectedly. I was laughing now, the annoyance I'd felt towards him moments ago melting away as I experienced his warmth radiating all the way through my flesh and organs, through the aching holes in my heart, and seeping into my very bones.

"Good... to see you... too, Jake." I choked out using what little breath he'd left remaining in my compressed lungs. I allowed my feet to dangle a foot from the ground for a few seconds longer, still laughing, before swinging my legs up to hook around his waist at the ankles, squeezing him with all four limbs as hard as my inadequate muscles allowed. I gently pressed the side of my head against his and I heard him exhale one last laugh into my neck before allowing me to slide down his lean torso to the floor.

He sighed contentedly, like he'd just switched on a light after trying to read in the dark for the past two hours.

"_That's_ more like it," he said.

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**Well, let me know what you think. The next chapter won't be nearly this fluffy, I promise. Things get a little angsty.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks so much to those who reviewed! I tried to get this next bit out as fast as I could, but I decided half way through that instead of stopping and posting the first half as its own chapter, I'd barrel through and get the whole scene into one. It's been tough to find the time this week, because it was my birthday on Wednesday so I've been at varoius dinners/get-togethers almost every night. Birthdays are exhausting! :) Anyways, enough with the excuses. Hope you enjoy,**

**Oh, and I don't claim ownership for Twilight... or Iron Chef America.**

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CHAPTER 2

I couldn't believe it. The downpour had actually stopped… and not in the usual way that rain lets up, where it gradually lessens and lessens until there's nothing left but a barely-discernable mist hovering fresh and serene over the shimmering grass, but in a fake bad-movie-rain way, where the couple sucking face on screen finally come up for air only to realize that the key element in their hideously cliché moment has been cut off magically, unrealistically, abruptly, like the ceasing of those annoying automatic sinks found in airport bathrooms. One minute it was pounding the side of the house, the next – BAM!

Vanished.

Unbelievable.

I couldn't help but scowl vindictively out Jacob's kitchen window, disgusted at… nature for reserving its benevolence until I'd actually managed to seek out shelter.

I was perched in a forward lean atop Jake's counter, elbows on my knees, hunchbacked and head cocked towards the window, vaguely registering the _thud, thud, thud _of my damp-sock-enveloped heels as they bumped against the cupboards below. I was swinging my feet lazily, pinching between my thumb and middle finger the core of the apple that he'd begrudgingly relinquished –meaning he'd made me tackle him for it… and let me win.

I decided to let nature off the hook for the time being, returning my attention to the impressive scene that was continuing to unfold in front of me. Jacob was firmly situated in his usual chair at the Blacks' large, round, considerably dented oak table, head lowered over a bowl of cornflakes, shovelling enthusiastically. Around him lay the spoils of his recent expedition through the pantry for consumable goods.

I was now staring at him with one eyebrow raised, surely looking more than a little perturbed. I was hoping he'd notice me soon because my forehead was starting to cramp up. After a few brutal patience-testing minutes he glanced up, mouth crammed with…_ something,_ and jutted his chin out inquisitively, staring at me all bug-eyed.

"Wuh..?" he sputtered accusingly in between chews, implying that it was _my_ behaviour, not his, that merited an explanation.

"Oh nothing, it's just that I've been here for what, …" I placed my palms on the edge of the counter beside my hips and leaned around, twisting my neck to look at the clock on the wall behind me, "…fifteen minutes?"

Still unable to verbalize his retort, he aimed a look at me that clearly argued: _And your point is?_

I continued, "_Somehow_, in that time, you've managed to consume the last _half_ of that… disturbingly-loaded-with-meat pizza, um… three mini-bagels, one… two…three… _four_ granola bars," I was using my fingers to keep a tally as my eyes scanned the table for the crumpled wrappers, but I wasn't done yet, "half a bag of chips, two bananas-"

"And a partridge in a pear treeeeee…" Jake sang tunelessly. He'd _just_ managed to swallow whatever had been obstructing his obnoxious mouth, and was wasting no time in making a mockery of my… mockery. He waved his arms above his head as he did so, spoon held aloft like a conductor's baton, like he was Maestro of the Kitchen Philharmonic.

A giddy laugh _almost_ gurgled up from deep in the back of my throat, but I held back, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. I settled instead on riling him further, "Well, it wouldn't really _surprise_ me…" I threw him a concerned look.

His pupils languidly trailed an imaginary line along the ceiling before dropping to survey my face with contempt.

"It's meat _lover's,_" he corrected, "I love meat. What's so wrong with _that_? And what's wrong with being _hungry_? I just woke up."

I knew it.

"Are you ever NOT hungry, Jake?" I shot back with an air of condescension. "Don't you walk around this house like Pac Man, just…" I mimicked said character's chomping action with my hand "…eating everything that gets in your path?" I was now giggling almost uncontrollably as I considered the plausibility of my absurd question.

He dropped his spoon to the table with a huff and folded his arms in front of himself, head tilted cantankerously to the side.

"Did you come over here _just _to ridicule me? 'Cause if so, you know the way out." He raised one of his burly arms out to the side, straight and rigid as a lead pipe, finger pointed resolutely at my boots, which were still lying in a puddle by the front door. He kept his defiant eyes on me, his expression _daring_ me to move as he casually sipped from a bucket-sized glass of water clenched in his right fist, left arm still steadfast in its directive.

"Like you _really _want me to leave," I retorted with a self-satisfied leer, "you know you _love_ me."

I'd _meant_ for this to come across as a facetious jab at his (really laughable) attempt to convince me that I'd overstepped my bounds in the witty banter game that we'd been playing, and that he actually wanted me to go. Please, spare me.

To be fair I _really _never should have said it at all, _especially_ when he was right in the middle of such a generous gulp.

Hindsight is, as they say, twenty/twenty.

He tried so hard - bless him - not to spray water all over the table, but the unfortunate result was that it ended up mostly coming out of his nose. He covered his face with his hand, spine contracted into a question mark, and gestured wildly at me to pass him the dishtowel that I'd used on his head earlier, which was now lying rumpled in a heap a few feet from my hand. I tossed the apple core into the sink, hopped down from my post, absently shaking and stomping out the pins and needles that were radiating up from my toes, and flung the wrinkled cloth at his outstretched hand as he hacked loudly and repeatedly. He was unable to stop; his face, now half concealed by the dishtowel, was becoming redder by the second - from the coughing, I told myself.

I darted around the table and wedged myself between his chair and the wall to pound on his broad back with my balled-up fists. He held up his free hand to indicate that my assistance was unnecessary, but I was nonetheless concerned; it looked like he'd been unable to inhale for the past few seconds, and the chances of him succeeding at this endeavor in the near future did not seem promising either. The coughing only sounded deeper and more severe now. I settled for just rubbing his back in small circles, patting it intermittently.

After a brief moment I was feeling courageous, so I took a few small steps around his chair to hazard a glance at his face, vaguely acknowledging my almost subconscious relief at no longer being jammed ominously between him and the wall.

"Are you okay?" I ventured guiltily, squeezing the base of his neck.

He was merely convulsing now, his shoulders hitching in spasm as he made strained, guttural sounds somewhere near the back of his throat. He gave me a shaky thumbs-up, head pulsating up and down rapidly to indicate the affirmative, eyes glassy and bloodshot.

He'd still managed to get water pretty much everywhere, but especially in his lap. At this point I noticed that he hadn't changed out of his rain-sodden shorts from before, so it really wasn't too much of a loss.

I tsk-ed audibly, nudging the side of his calf with my toe. "Jake, go change your pants, for God's sake."

He seemed happy for any excuse to leave the table. His face was almost purple now, and he was still making wheezing noises like my truck did when its engine was reluctant to turn over. Come to think of it, I'd have to get him to take a look at that. Maybe it was just the starter…

I was jolted out my reverie when the chair he'd been sitting on was sent clattering back into the wall as he launched himself to his feet and stumbled down the hall towards his room.

"And put a shirt on while you're at it!" I called after him, knowing it would make me feel a little warmer if he didn't_ look_ like he should be so cold.

As soon as he'd staggered through his bedroom doorway I heard him release a barrage of ferocious coughs that would put an asthmatic, chain-smoking coal miner to shame. I smiled and shook my head in bewilderment, though _really_ I knew why he'd downplayed the intensity of his affliction in front of me.

The poor guy had been trying so hard to hold back these past few months, and I had to go and casually toss the L word right in his staunchly supportive face. Stupid, stupid, stupid Bella.

I decided to give him a few minutes alone to scrape up the remainder of his dignity.

Assuming that he wouldn't want to eat any more now that he'd effectively lost the ability to breathe like a normal human being, I began to clear up the disaster area that was the kitchen table. I found a plastic garbage bag in one of the lower drawers, folding up the pizza box and shoving it inside, then using my arm to literally scrape all of the other disposable items off the surface, making sure to avoid the water that Jake had distributed rather carelessly along the table's edge.

I dumped all the dishes into the sink - for _him_ to do later. As much as his… 'carefree' lifestyle irked me so much that I sometimes had to fight back an intense desire to resort to sanitary pandemonium, I absolutely refused to be Jacob's maid. He knew this, yet it annoyed me that my painfully reluctant blind-eye-turning hadn't once yet inspired him to be the least bit proactive.

The coughing, I suddenly realized, had stopped. I decided that this was either a very good thing or a very… unsettling thing. I snatched up the towel that had proven itself rather useful so far today, swiped the remaining moisture off the tabletop with one brisk stroke, and made my way towards the laundry room.

Oh my way past Jake's door I laid my ear against the wood, shuddering unexpectedly at how cool it felt compared to the rest of the house; he always left his bedroom window wide open, a necessity due to his bizarrely elevated body temperature. I could see a sliver of warm yellow light creeping out from underneath his door, but my useless human ears weren't picking up any signs of life.

I tentatively drummed my fingertips on the doorframe. "Everything alright in there? Do I have to call 911?"

"Ha Ha," he replied with a slight croak. I jumped, not realizing until I did so that I hadn't actually expected to hear his voice. He piped up again, "Hey, come in here for a sec."

I hesitated, "Are you decent?" a question I wasn't sure I _really_ wanted the answer to. He _had_ closed the door, though.

"Uh… depends on your definition."

"Jake…"

"_Yes_, yes, to _you_, I'm perfectly decent."

I slowly turned the knob and straightened my elbow, peeking my head through the smallest crack I could manage. The cool air suddenly swirled past my face, snaking down and around my neck to elicit an almost erotic shudder that radiated outwards from the core of my spine, causing every last delicate hair on my visibly outstretched arm to awaken and elevate.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed wearing navy blue sweatpants that had been attacked – as _all_ of his other pants had– by a pair of overzealous scissors so that they ended just above his knees. He was holding a balled-up pair of socks in his hand. I heaved a sigh of relief, swinging the door open and stepping inside, depositing the saturated towel on a low wooden bookshelf next to his door.

Items of clothing and various other bedroom missiles were strewn chaotically around the tiny space, causing my right eyelid to twitch unnoticeably. Hadn't I told him he'd instigate my breakdown eventually? _Breathe deep and repeat, 'I absolutely refuse to be Jacob's maid.'_

"Socks, Jake?" I questioned, trying to ignore the mess by focusing skeptically on the contents of his grasp, "I thought I was pushing it when I asked you to put a _shirt _on, which, by the way, I'm glad to see you've done…"

He hadn't.

I persisted, "…I didn't even think you _owned_ socks."

"I didn't throw away ALL my clothes after I started phasing. See?" He produced a grey t-shirt, dangling it warily off his outstretched fingertips and giving it an untrusting squint like it belonged in the same league as the unpleasant rag that was now seeping water in small rivulets off the edge of the bookshelf, meeting his carpet with a dull _tap… tap… tap_.

"Really?" I mused, channeling my inner detective, 'Cause based on evidence I've been painstakingly collecting these past few months… I beg to differ," I teased.

"Save the cheek." He mumbled, holding the socks out towards me. "They're for you. I could feel how wet yours were earlier when you kicked me and demanded that I change my shorts. Maybe _you _should change your _socks_." His self-righteousness was cuter than it should have been.

I shook my head and sat next to him, peeling off my wet socks and replacing them with his. They were ridiculously huge on my size 6 feet, the heel hitting me mid-calf as I yanked them up only to have them fall back down to gather at my ankles when I let go. They were warm and dry, nonetheless.

"You make me sound like such an evil bitch!" I rocked to the side, bumping him teasingly on the arm with my shoulder. "I did not _kick_ you or _demand_ anything. God, sometimes you're so immature."

"What!?…"

In trying to make him laugh, I'd forgotten that he was sensitive about his age, or rather our relative ages. We'd established through our silly life-experience game that he had at least ten years on me thanks mostly to his impressive automotive repair skills and virtual self-sufficiency, and this seemed to suit him just fine.

Still, he looked completely unimpressed with my calling-him-out on his juvenile bellyaching. I gave myself a mental high-five. I was on a roll today, like I was somehow appropriating _his_ usual innate ability to get under _my_ skin.

Thirty seconds passed, give or take, without him saying a word. His breathing was indiscernible, but the silence, like a cacophonic implosion, the very antithesis of sound, burned at my ears, signifying that my words really _had _seemed to have rubbed him the wrong way.

I finally heard him grunt out a bitter-sounding laugh, followed by a gruff onslaught of indistinct mutterings. While I could barely register his enunciation – and, since my aural competence had already been called into question once today, I wasn't about to start trusting my ears unconditionally at this point - I could have sworn I caught the words 'always comparing me to _him_' somewhere in the whole jumbled mess.

I was completely taken aback. Where the _hell_ did this come from?

"Pardon me? …" I stuttered, laughing, still giving him the benefit of the doubt.

"Nothing."

That confirmed it; this was definitely _something_.

"No, no. My ears may not be as good as yours but I definitely detected some whining just there," I teased, twisting my finger forcibly into his arm, "so why don't you just say what's on your mind?"

"Okay, _fine_. _Him_. EDWARD. _That's_ what's on my mind. I'm _so_ sick and tired of dancing around the damned subject."

I cringed inwardly at the mention of his name, more specifically at the disgusted manner in which it was spat out.

"What about him?"

"Will I EVER be good enough for you?" He said with irritation. "Or has he created a standard so lofty that you've decided you're finished with relationships forever? 'Cause if that's the case then I gotta know so I can stop wasting my time."

I was still in shock, feeling the need to revisit the question: where had this all come from? I shamefully admitted to myself that it _did_ made sense, in the back of my mind I'd always known that sooner or later one little word, look, touch, gesture would cause it all to come bubbling up like molten lava from somewhere down in the depths of his repressed, silenced, pining heart. I'd just always stupidly hoped that he'd be able to hold out… you know… forever.

He was looking intently at the side of my face, though my own eyes were now locked, as if thoroughly fascinated, on the wet socks that were now rolled up in my hands.

"I'm still… broken-" I whispered feebly.

"Then let me help _fix_ you." I could see him smiling warmly out of the corner of my eye. He lifted his hand to push a few strands of hair behind my ear. The warmth of his touch caused my eyelids to drift shut, my mouth still set in a perplexed grimace. "I'm good at fixing things. I fixed the motorbikes, the rabbit, your truck…"

My eyes snapped open again and I rose to my feet, turning to face him with an exhausted sigh. These futile back-and-forths between us had been so infrequent as of late. Like I said, he'd been so good.

"Yes, but you're just too _impatient, _Jacob. Why do you always feel the need to fix everything _right away_?"

"Are you _still_ on that whole antenna thing?" his eyes narrowed at me, "I _wasn't_ showing off! _You_ were the one who was going to have a _meltdown_ if you missed the end of battle swordfish."

"It was _halibut_, Jake, and I actually thought Batali might LOSE that one, which like, _never_ happens…" I allowed my ridiculous argument to peter out lamely. I thought back to his adventure on the roof almost a month ago. I guess I _had_ jokingly accused him of showboating at the time.

He took a deep breath, pushing his case further in a voice so slow and calculated that it seemed like he might stop speaking completely after each word, "Look… I'm… just… _saying_," he took another unsteady breath in, "you don't want to see the bigger picture, Bella. All you see is him, and he's not even _in_ the picture anymore."

He stood up and smiled, a look of almost-pity swimming in his dark eyes. I turned my back to him, unable to stand his sympathetic expression. My own eyes fluttered shut and rolled up into the unforgiving blackness of my skull as his hand came up from behind me once again to brush along the side of my neck, moving my hair off my shoulder and trailing down my arm before grasping my hand and squeezing firmly, timidly, devotedly. "I know you feel _something_ here too," His breath was hot in my ear, "I just know it…"

My reflexes caused a shiver to run down my spine, but in my determination to reject him, I construed it as a shiver of distaste… or of the cold assaulting me from his open window. Anything but… _that. _I cringed, giving him a sorry pout, and pulled my hand from his apologetically, moving both of my arms to my chest to clutch at the newly reopened hole within.

"I'm sorry Jake, I just can't… I _can't_ get over him that easily. You _know_ that. We've been over it a million times." I had never sounded less persuasive in my life.

He heaved a sigh, "Sure, sure, I get it, whatever. The selfish bastard _leaves you alone _in a forest and you're still hung up on him, fine. But he's GONE now, and even _you_ have to admit that you KNOW he's not coming back. Things change and you've got to stop being so stubborn and allow yourself to _move on_. I can help make it easier for you," he stepped closer; we were less than a foot apart. "I know what it feels like to-"

"_Please_, don't even try to start this with me right now," I cut in, stepping back abruptly and lacing my tense fingers together on top of my head, "you couldn't _possibly_ understand how hard things have been for me. Sometimes you say these… these things and you're just so damned… thoughtless and smug that it makes me wish I could give you just _one_ _second_ inside my head so you can know the pain I feel at losing someone I love. Maybe if you had some sort of _clue_ you'd stop all this nonsense and just … I don't know, leave me the hell alone." I allowed my arms to flop back to my sides.

His expression was one of shock and offense.

"You came to _me_ today…"

I sighed exasperatedly, "Come on, you know what I mean. Just… stop… telling me that you understand me. You don't. No one does."

While I could easily admit that the last bit _was_ a tad melodramatic, I felt that I needed my words to contain all the force of a 2x4 upside his head in order to get my point across, so I nailed it home with a malicious scowl, "You'll _never _know how I feel."

I could now discern about half a dozen different emotions in his eyes: The shock was still there, this time accompanied by hurt, disgust, disbelief, betrayal, and one I never thought I'd _ever_ see him direct at me, rage.

"How dare you." He spat almost so inaudibly that my ears wouldn't have registered it had we not been standing so close, completely alone in his tiny room.

"How dare _I?_"

"You think you have a monopoly on misery or something? You think I haven't felt pain because of love before?" He was shouting now, so I shouted even louder. It was an eruption with enough force to send a hypothetical flock of birds outside scattering into the rain-dampened afternoon sky.

"OH _DON'T _EVEN… I can _guarantee_ that whatever it is you think you feel for me isn't even _close_ to what I feel for him."

"I'm not-" he tried to shout an interruption, but I cut him off before he got the chance.

"Aa- Aa- Ah! No, you listen to me."

I was pointing my finger, at the end of my stiff, shaking arm, directly in his face, my tone dripping with disdain, "You walk around all day smiling and laughing and… things just roll right off you don't they?" I flung the extended limb violently in the general direction of his postage-stamp window. "Well if you _really_ understood how I felt, you sure as hell wouldn't be, oh I don't know, living it up all carefree fixing cars and playing football on the beach with your wolf buddies or whatever the hell it is you do with your _glorious_ free time."

I was seething. The anger coming off us both was so tangible I could have plucked it from the air with my trembling fingers.

He closed his eyes as if doing so would bring about his momentary disappearance from the room. I assumed he was trying to collect himself before he phased into something entirely different, entirely too dangerous, but I knew he had control over his _ability_ now, more so than any of the others. He simply wouldn't allow that to happen.

When he opened his eyes again he was indeed calmer, but he delivered his next words like a police negotiator trying to talk a determined suicidal maniac back from a precipice; he spoke like he had the power to impede an approaching apocalypse, "You don't know what you're saying, Bella. I'm going to forgive you now before you go too far."

I was beyond floored, "You're going to _forgive me!?_ _You're_ the one who's too damned insensitive to back off and see that I'm suffering here. You're not making it any easier on me. You think you are but you're NOT. So why don't you get back to me when _your_ heart is this broken. Then maybe _I'll_ forgive _you._"

My voice broke open on the last word and I glared at him trying to blink away the impending tears, but unfortunately my blinking had the reverse effect. Two single drops were propelled at lightning speed down my cheekbones and onto his grey t-shirt, which was now lying crumpled at our feet. I continued to glare directly into his eyes as I waited for his inevitable admission of guilt. He would mumble an apology, wrap me in his clumsy yet strong embrace, and I would forgive _him_.

It was always this way with us.

But after a few seconds I realized he didn't seem to _care_ that I was crying. Looking up at his face I was hit with a premonition, a sense of what could only be described as imminent disaster, and it had absolutely nothing to do with werewolves. His eyes snapped shut once again as his hands moved up to grip the short hair at his temples. Then something inside him snapped.

"Aauugggh!" he growled in frustration, flinging his hands back down to his sides and gesturing sharply with his left index finger as he spoke, "That's _it_ I've _had it_! You're so… self-centered sometimes! You think my life is some huge barrel of laughs? You're _actually_ trying to compare what I'VE had to go through in MY life to your… sad… pathetic… obsession with- "

_SMACK!_

I felt my hand connect with his face two seconds before my mind registered it. The action now felt so awkward. It was nowhere near as graceful and satisfying as I'd imagined it would be when I'd seen it done in the movies or on one of Renee's soap operas. With his staggering height I'd had to reel back and arch my hand up as if I were trying to swat a fly on the wall near the ceiling. Hot tears were now rolling unabashedly down my flushed cheeks, but for once in the entire time since I'd known him, HIS cheek – the one that was discernible to me as he held his head in the position I'd left it - looked almost redder than mine.

I'd done that.

He kept his face only half-visible to me, his profile tilted slightly downwards, eyes burning holes in the floorboards. His breathing was deep and strenuous. He stayed this way for what seemed like an eternity. It gave me some time to consider his cutting words: _You think I haven't felt pain because of love?… You don't know what you're saying… You're trying to compare what I've had to go through in my…_

…

…And all of a sudden I couldn't breathe.

Oh God.

Oh God.

The anger on my face transformed instantly into absolute horror, guilt, and regret.

Oh God.

What did I do?

My mouth dropped open as though I was about to speak, but I didn't get a chance to apologize. He wasn't going to forgive me now. He turned his head slowly back around to face me. His black eyes were brimming with tears, his teeth biting down so hard on his bottom lip that I thought he might draw blood. He took a quick shuddering breath before delivering his counterstrike – a blow that stung a thousand times worse than the one I'd rashly inflicted upon him seconds earlier. He said what I knew was coming before I even had a chance to exhale.

"I was talking about my mom."

_You think I haven't felt pain because of love before?_

Shit_._

He didn't waste a second before striding determinedly out the door, his arm grazing mine in the process, making me take a single, rocking step backwards as if in slow-motion. I felt like I didn't even deserve to call him back, to make him stop, to forgive me like he'd said he would… before I'd gone too far. I dropped to the floor cross-legged, my head in my hands as the tears multiplied, seeping through the gaps in my fingers. I gasped for breath over and over like I was drowning; I was an inconsequential object being tossed about by the indifferent sea, and this time there were no reassuring warm hands to rescue me from the clawing of the frigid waves.

I'd called him insensitive. I'd told him to leave me the hell alone. I'd _hit_ him, for God's sake. But the one thing that made me feel the worst was that I'd thought all along that he was talking about me. I felt a shame wash over me like nothing I'd ever experienced before. And at _that_ moment I realized that, for the first time in months, I wasn't crying because of Edward_._

He wasn't talking about me…

Of course he wasn't talking about me.

* * *

**I said there'd be angst, didn't I? **

**Let me know what you think!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Thanks to everyone who's sticking with me here. This chapter was _so_ hard for me to finish, mostly because I'm not a huge fan of Bella when she's all depressed and tormented, but it was essential to the furthering of my storyline. Plus, I think everyone's a little guilty of being overly melodramatic immediately after an embarrassing or traumatic event. After some time passes we gain a bit of perspective and are able to mellow out a bit. Anyways, I hope I didn't take her too far OOC. :) Please be kind to me!**

* * *

CHAPTER 3

The sea abounds with innumerable vast fissures, bottomless caverns that carve their way like scars across the earth's most inhospitable, agonizingly silent ocean landscapes. Even the most determined unwavering beams of glorious sunlight - warm, and radiant, and all encompassing - could not hope to impale the intense liquid black and plummet miles down into the trenches to finally arrive at these depths.

_This_ was where I'd come to rest, motionless and undeniably alone, hair stirred up by the water's steady undulation, dancing and swirling lethargically around my face.

Deep, resonant white noise was relentlessly pulsating, pounding in my eardrums. My eyes cracked open exposing slits of cornea to salt water, but I felt no sting; I was a _part _of the sea now. Soft, barely-visible patches of violet-blue iridescence rolled, dipped, and swayed across the swelling and receding surface high above where I lay. My body remained heavy and immobile like a starfish, arms and legs spread out and inert, devoid of all but the most basic elements of life: Breathe. Blink. Swallow.

A new noise, distant and resembling radio static floated past my ears, perhaps tiny rocks and grains of sand scraping together as they tumbled over one another across the seabed, propelled by passing currents …

My face screwed up with uncertainty… _No, that wasn't it…_

_Car tires…_ crunching against the asphalt driveway outside my bedroom window, causing my heavy lids to scrape slowly open over my dried up, weary eyes. A distorted trapezoid of amber-colored light slid across the ceiling and down the wall stopping abruptly - illuminating Austen through Fitzgerald on my meticulously alphabetized bookshelf for about 3 seconds - then disappearing along with the steady thrumming of the engine.

The slamming of the cruiser's door resounded in my ears, thrusting me brusquely back to reality, back onto dry land, resulting in an abrupt resurgence of the pounding headache that had initially been brought on by hours of seemingly involuntary tears.

Charlie was home.

Great.

I was still lying where I had flung myself - playing the part of my own little turbulent sea – on top of the bed sheets in my chilly, pitch-black room. I stared vacantly up into the vast darkness, blinking with almost inhuman deliberateness, my eyeballs now parched from having expended what was apparently, unbeknownst to me, my daily quota of tears. I hadn't been sleeping, but I may as well have been; at least sleeping would have been more constructive… less detrimental than what I actually _had _been doing.

The physical evidence of my recent sob-fest, thousands of tiny droplets, were scattered everywhere… on my lashes, in my ears, traversing my cheeks, dampening my hair, and bleeding into my pillow. I'd barely even registered their descent. My body and my brain were two completely separate entities, the former abandoned, blissfully anesthetized to the mayhem that was taking place within the latter.

My mind was firing on all pistons, reeling with the speed and intensity of a million thoughts as they clattered off my cranium's inner walls, racing around in circles and making me dizzy.

I longed for my allegorical sea to return, to rise up and seep in through my ears, submerging my brain and drowning out every last memory, every last word I'd ever spoken, to feel every inch of tissue succumb to the blissful nothingness that accompanied its slow, deliberate suffocation…

…To put it a little less morose I wanted to just peacefully descend into a nice, long, dreamless sleep… but _of course_ that wasn't likely to happen.

Not now.

I closed my eyes and tried to force myself to think faraway thoughts. The images that came to me were ones that I was all too familiar with, and for whatever reason, at this moment, I felt oddly comforted by their familiarity…

…_Glistening ivory-skinned hands pushing, holding me back as I try to follow, try desperately to grasp at them, those smooth, hard, pitiless hands…_

_Please don't leave me… Please! I'll do anything! God, I'll do anything…_

…_The hands now floating softly across my collarbone, fingers unfurling like tulip petals to slide gracefully around my throat, Icy cold and unforgiving, their lethal authority over my sense of reason causing my mind to whirl with intoxication as the digits delicately press themselves into my neck, carefully and lovingly asphyxiating me…_

Somewhere deep in the back of my head an angry voice was reasoning with me:

_What the hell are you doing!? _

_You say you'll do anything… does that include changing who you are?_

…_Changing WHAT you are?_

_You know he never asked that of you, THAT was your idea all along…_

The voice skimmed past my ears, but I paid it no mind. I _never_ listened to my conscience anymore when it said logical things like this. If _logic_ were enough to bring clarity to the minds of the afflicted, then every problem in the world would be solved, _SNAP!_ Just like that. Depression… war… starvation…

…suffering…

…addiction …

…_Reveling at the cool sensation as the hands slithered their long, passionate, indomitable fingers over my comparatively fragile skin, shivering with pleasure like I had hours ago when the damp, chilly air had licked the curve of my neck as I'd entered Jacob's bedr-_

Suddenly my body and my mind came slamming together like an oblivious sparrow and a freshly-windexed plate glass window. I felt my stomach loosen its connection from my insides, hitting my vertebrae and teetering sideways before rolling off to plunge freely past the sheets, through the mattress, and onto the floor with a _THUD _sending the dust bunnies scattering in confusion. _This_ was what I'd been trying to avoid: those _other _images, the ones that were all too fresh, oozing like open wounds.

"Jacob-" I croaked indistinctly, my voice thick with emotion.

I don't know why I felt compelled to say it out loud; the sound of his name stung my waterlogged ears like audio feedback, resonating and echoing through my head excruciatingly. I clenched my eyes shut and tried to think about _anything_ else, tried to conjure back the feeling of those cold, dead hands caressing me threateningly, inviting me to a place I wanted so _very_ badly to cross over to, a place where _forever_ was a blessing instead of a curse…

But it was no use. The images from a few hours ago wedged themselves into my subconscious-

…_Grabbing the handle on his closet door with my stiff, damp fingertips, slipping once, regaining hold…_

…_Hauling myself up bent double at the hips, greedily swallowing breaths between sobs, anxiously pleading with the emergent nausea simmering in my abdomen…_

…_Stumbling, staggering, barreling through the airless corridor…_

_Kitchen._

_Boots._

_Door._

_Keep your eyes on the ground. If you see that look on his face again it's over. You'll lose it._

_You'll lose everything…_

Footsteps.

They were coming up the stairs. I hadn't even heard the sound of the front door, but then again, I guess I hadn't _really_ been here in this room when Charlie had entered the house. I'd been in another place altogether… in a doorway in La Push…

_…Tripping out into the cool dusk, hands primed, arms buckling slightly as they break my fall onto his wooden porch, head snapping down quickly and then back up sending tears spattering Pollock-like against the warped, grainy surface, blossoming inside the frame of my outstretched thumbs and forefingers…_

_…Wrapping my bruised palms around the shuddering steering wheel, hurtling myself forward with unsafe speed, mind focused solely on my bed, the place where numbness is synonymous with comfort, welcoming me back like an old friend…_

_You knew this would happen. It was only a matter of time before you both ended up hurt-_

Reality gripped my shoulders and, with urgent force, shook me back to the present as the footsteps approached my sanctuary. I quickly scrambled beneath the quilt, pulling it up to my face and turning my back to the door, knees tucked up into my chest, my alert state betrayed only by the hysterical thrashing of my heart. As the hinge creaked open, a vertical sliver of light widened across the wall in front of my face only to be obscured immediately by the shadow of a human form.

"Bella?" Charlie sounded worried. That was never good. "What are you doing up here so early? It's only six thirty… are you okay?"

Loaded question, Charlie.

I whimpered convincingly. "Mmmhh… I don't feel very well," I moaned, "can you make dinner for yourself tonight? Don't worry about me." Even in _this_ emotional state I was skeptical of his ability to produce a palatable meal for himself, though in reality he was entirely capable. He'd managed to get along fine for 18 years without _my_ culinary expertise.

"Sure, honey. Did you need me to bring you anything? Some water maybe? Or I can go down to the Chinook if you need me to pick you up some medicine, I think they're still open-"

"No." I choked out. "No, I'm okay I just need to sleep."

"Of course. I'll just leave you be, then. I hope you feel better, kiddo," he whispered as he shut the door behind him, turning the knob as he brought it against the frame to prevent the latch from clicking noisily.

I felt a lump of pain attempt to make its way down my esophagus, remaining lodged behind my tonsils instead.

_Me too_.

* * *

Heavy, thumping steps and chair scrapings woke me out of my near-comatose state, although, once again, I hadn't _technically_ been sleeping for the past few hours.

Hot sunshine blazed through my window, bypassing even the tightly shut drapes, taunting me with its cheerful radiance.

The nerve. Didn't it know I was _trying _to be miserable?

I glanced at my bedside clock. It was Saturday, 10:46am, six days since the _incident_.

He hadn't called… in _six days_ he hadn't called, and I hadn't tried to call him.

I had justified my lack of motivation rather feebly, convincing myself that I just needed to give him some time before I…

…but I didn't even have a _clue_ what the necessary steps would be in my thus-far-intangible _FixJakeandBella _plan.

Therefore, it was for _this_ reason that I hadn't yet wavered from my state of general disenchantment for six painfully long days, keeping myself busy with school and work but otherwise cruising once again down that lonely, intimate road that always led right here, back to my bed where I lay curled up on my side, head thrust deep into my compacted and abused pillow, staring unresponsively at Jacob's ludicrously huge socks that were now draped side by side over the back of my desk chair.

I wondered if he was still angry. I was certain that he hadn't tried to contact me; Charlie would have mentioned it. Was he still thinking about what I'd said to him… what I'd done to him?

_How dare you_.

_How dare I?_

_You think you have a monopoly on misery or something?_

I mulled over my current state. Jake certainly had made quite the point.

The world was full to bursting with people who had absolutely no control over the suffering they were constantly forced to endure, and yet here I was continually _allowing_ myself to fall right back into this easy state of unhappiness. Was I really such a glutton for punishment?

No… as much as I tried to rationalize it, as much as Jake _had_ succeeded in taking me down a few pegs, I still refused to feel guilty for my pain. Edward's desertion - while not even _remotely_ comparable to, let's say, the war in Afghanistan - was nonetheless a significantly traumatic event in my thus-far remarkably un…traumatic life, and therefore I, Bella Swan, had a right to be upset about it.

Sure, I could certainly admit that there were plenty of people out there who were far worse off than I was, but the thing that was _really_ bothering me was that one of those worse-off individuals was the one whose steady hands had been holding me together for the past three or four months, the one who I affectionately referred to as my sun, my _air, _breathing him in and casting him out over, and over, and over, and over...

_I can help make it easier on you. I know what it feels like…_

I was struck suddenly with an idea: maybe it was _my _turn now. I'd been taking so much from Jake this whole time… maybe there was something that I could do for _him, _something that would help us both.

This was it! The Plan was beginning to take shape in my mind.

But where to start?

_Getting up would be the first brilliant idea, _I told myself as I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, surprised at how heavy they felt as I brought my swollen feet in contact with the freezing hardwood. Blackness swam up into my field of vision as I stood and swayed towards the door allowing vertigo to take hold only momentarily. I trailed my hand absently over the wall for balance as I padded soundlessly down the hallway, finally shaking the last few rainbow-coloured sparks out of my eyes as I arrived in the bathroom.

As my eyes skimmed over the mirror above the sink I was forced to do a double take, horrified at what I saw.

A solid week of trying to convince Charlie that I still wasn't quite feeling physically up to par had caused me to actually _look_ like I was sick. My hair brought to mind a chaotic mass of cotton candy that had been sloppily assembled by some negligent, newly hired, minimum-wage-paid junior high student at the Arizona State Fair, which I'd frequented sufficiently in my youth to grant me expert status in the matter. Dark blue half-moon swatches blemished the swollen, tear-stained skin under my eyes, the rest of the flesh on my face resembling dried glue, pallid and virtually translucent.

I made a half-assed effort to improve my appearance, pulling my hair up into a loose ponytail and pinching at my cheeks to elicit a realistic looking blush.

As I was brushing my teeth, allowing my gaze to melt into the wall adjacent to the mirror, I broke the Plan down into simple steps, starting with the ultimate goal (_FixJakeandBella_) and working backwards:

In order to fix my relationship with Jake I first had to get him to forgive me, and in order to do _this_ I had to find him, and talk to him. A tiny voice in my head was trying to dissuade me, telling me I was likely to regret what I was about to do, but I knew I had to at least _try _to understand what he was going through even if that meant wrenching the lid off Pandora's box. I had to know what I'd done to make Jacob… _my Jacob_ so upset that he wouldn't even call me for six days.

I knew exactly who to ask in order to find out.

* * *

I shuffled hesitantly into our small kitchen. Charlie was sitting at the table, his back to me, hunched over _The_ _Seattle Times_. As I approached him I realized that he was holding a pen and… doing the crossword puzzle?

Well, sort of.

The margins surrounding the puzzle itself were teeming with hastily executed geometric doodles. Only about three answers had actually been scrawled into the numbered squares, not one of them intersecting another; obviously he was forgoing numerical order in favour of the 'go with what you know' strategy.

I walked into his line of vision and he looked up, clearly surprised to see me in the land of the living.

"Oh, hey Bella. Are you finally feeling better?" he said with a sweet, yet patronizingly sympathetic smile. I brushed it off. _It's only because he cares about you_.

"Morning dad, yeah I think my headache's finally gone, and I don't really feel nauseous anymore." I answered pathetically, changing the subject as quick as I could, but knowing regardless that he wouldn't be eager to continue discussing the details of my long enduring –albeit contrived- physical illness. "Are you actually doing the crossword? I thought you hated that kind of stuff."

"_Hate _is quite the strong word isn't it, kid?" He replied sounding slightly insulted. "Besides, is there something wrong with me trying to expand my old, rusty mind?"

"I guess not." I smiled, not taking the bait to compliment him on his intellectual tenacity.

"Hey, maybe you can _help_ me a bit. What's a 3 letter word for _assumed command_?"

"Um… led?"

"Yeah that fits." He bent his head and scanned the puzzle's lower left corner until his pen found the spot, 36 Down, slashing off three heavily-slanted capitals.

"Pshht… dad _any_ 3-letter word fits if you've got absolutely nothing down yet," I joked, reaching into the fridge to get some milk to go with the granola I'd just pulled from the cupboard. "Seriously, if you're having to ask me about the 3-letter ones, you might want to just give up now." I flashed him a crooked smile over my shoulder.

"Oh ye of little faith." He wasn't allowing my teasing to ruin his determination.

I sat down, placing the bowl on the table in front of me, not feeling guilty in the least that I was about to 'interrupt' him from his noble endeavor.

"Um… dad can I ask you about something?"

A look of subtle panic flashed in his eyes, and I could almost _hear_ his frenzied thoughts as he added two and two together: _daughter…_s_ick…one week…_

"It's not… girl stuff is it? Because really you might be better off calling your mother for that sort of stuff." His eyes drifted back down to where his hand had automatically resumed its absent scribbling. He had abandoned the already doodle-saturated crossword section and flipped back to Page 1, feigning engrossment in the wild crosshatching of his pilfered _City of Forks Police Department_ pen, artfully giving an unsuspecting George W. a handlebar moustache.

I plucked the offending instrument from his grip, forcing him to connect his terrified eyes with mine. "Charlie!" I said with an amused smile, "I'm eighteen! I think I've got _that stuff_ mostly figured out, you don't have to give yourself an aneurysm," I assured him. "It's nothing like that."

"Oh." He unclenched, becoming noticeably at ease. "Well… okay then, shoot."

"Shoot?"

"Your question?"

"Oh, right…"

I hadn't yet considered how to approach the subject. Surely he would wonder where my curiosity had stemmed from, but I decided it didn't matter; I was going to go for the direct approach. I twirled the pen through my fingers, focusing intently on it and bobbing my head nonchalantly, hoping this didn't look as forced as it felt.

Here goes…

"How well did you know Mrs. Black?"

* * *

**Thank you, thank you to everyone who gave me such nice reviews. You've really given me motivation to continue. **

**So just a bit of an afterthought: It's been a long time since I've written anything even remotely worth reading, so I have to admit I feel a little rusty. As I was going about writing this chapter I began to get concerned with the length of some of my sentences, still scarred from so many years ago when my high school English teacher used to tell me to watch out for run-ons. Even after 4 years of university trying to undo that damage, it still lingers… **

**Anyways, I'm standing by my occasional long-windedness. Just crack open a copy of _To the Lighthouse_ and _try_ to find a sentence in there that's shorter than half a page. Ok so I'm exaggerating a bit, but seriously, if you want to read some of the most elaborate, drawn-out syntax known to man, that's the book for you. Sometimes I had to flip back just to find out where the sentence I'd been reading for the past 2 minutes STARTED. So, in summary, I suppose I'm (like Jacob) just channeling my inner Wo[o]lf. **


	4. Chapter 4

**Just a few points before we begin:**

**I've made Charlie a very vocal component in this chapter, which doesn't exactly comply with the Twilight canon, but I figure that in this instance it works because a) Bella asks him an open-ended personal question, which she never really does in the books, b) based on knowledge gathered from observing my own father, men like to ramble on about stuff that happened to them when they were younger (I think it's like a mid-life crisis thing or something… haha), and c) who the hell else could I use for this purpose? Bella would have been in her room sulking for _months _before prancing down to La Push for a heart-to-heart with Billy. Yeah, dunthinkso.**

**I also realize that some of the pre-Twilight stuff I delve into here might be slightly incongruent from what SM refers to in the books, (i.e. ages, years, relationships etc.) but there _really _isn't a whole lot about Bella and Jake's past in the canon anyways, which is why I wanted to write this in the first place: to give it the attention I think it deserves. Anyways, as always I welcome your thoughts. Just don't bother pointing out any chronological inaccuracies. I realize there are probably several. :)**

* * *

CHAPTER 4

The oppressively resilient midday sun had taken over the walls and was now encroaching on the carpet in the upstairs hallway, exposing millions of tiny, formerly invisible dust particles as they hovered lazily in the air, and steadily dispersing its warmth further into the house like a relentless, luminous disease. Yet despite its most determined efforts, and despite my treacherous proximity, it was still unable to locate me.

I was lodged behind the shield of the linen closet's sturdy door, which I'd swung open resignedly in a last-ditch effort to uncover my potentially non-existent treasure. The heels of both hands were pressed into my eye sockets, lingering there for a few seconds before fanning their fingers out to comb through my hair and thread together at the back of my head, elbows almost touching in front of my face, straining under the shaking of my taut, stressed biceps.

My gaze was locked inside the gaping, taunting mouth of the closet itself. Two hours of searching and _this_ is where I find them?

Breathe, Bella.

I allowed my arms to float back down to my sides, shaking my head faintly from side to side as if doing so would flick away any last trace of latent anxiety. I finally bent down to pick up what I hoped contained the fruits of my vigorous, drawn-out, and almost fruit_less_ rifling through Charlie's possessions, a pursuit that I would henceforth refer to as 'those two hours I will never get back'.

Prior to my search I'd waited patiently on the living room sofa, sitting uncomfortably on my awkwardly folded legs and staring out the window, chin supported on my loosely coiled knuckles for about ten minutes after my truck had pulled out of the driveway. I had to be absolutely sure that it – that _he_– was gone for the day.

_Go ahead and take it, Chief. I could use the alone time._

As I'd lingered on the worn, lumpy upholstery, the annoying logic side of my brain had flared up with a vengeance, frustratingly prodding me, posing the obvious question: why hadn't I just _asked _Charlie where to find them?

In reaction to this, the unreasonable, overreacting, psychotic component of my brain had flown predictably off the handle, giving my father's sleuthing ability far more credit than it was due, arguing that if I'd told him the truth about what I was looking for he would have employed his superior powers of deduction to connect all the appropriate the dots in about 0.3 seconds:

_Strange unexpected questions about Black family? Check._

_Mysterious sickness corresponding impeccably to amount of days without phone contact from best friend? Check._

_Subtle facial contortions at each mention of name? Check._

_And now…looking for PHOTOS? Good Lord! Of course! My wicked, heartless daughter has physically and emotionally maimed my best friend's son! No WONDER he hasn't called her in six days! _

…Yeah, so I was _definitely_ overestimating not only his, but _any _ordinary person's ability to correlate random, isolated details, but _still_… it was obvious which side of my brain had triumphed.

In any case, I wasn't about to tempt fate; I needed to know with concrete certainty that Charlie was completely, blissfully ignorant of the fact that Jacob and I were no longer speaking to one another, or, more importantly, _why_ Jacob and I were no longer speaking to one another.

I admitted to myself that there _was _a slim chance that Billy had already dropped the bomb, and that Charlie was keeping his in-the-know status under wraps in order to avoid sending me over the edge…

…but _then _logic actually came _through_ for me...

_Please_. My father definitely wasn't about to win any awards for his secret-keeping skills, plus Billy was probably just as oblivious as Charlie anyways. Jacob wasn't exactly a 'mope around the house' kinda guy what with all the car refurbishing and um… were---wolfing he had to keep his mind occupied. Billy most likely had no idea that anything had transpired between Jake and I. Nevertheless, I hadn't wanted to give Charlie any more suspicions than were _absolutely_ necessary…

So I'd waited.

During those ten minutes of gratuitous staring into space, ass parked uneasily on top of my contorted limbs, I'd begun to feel my extremities slowly fall asleep, tingling at first and then gradually growing numb from lack of blood flow.

I'd wondered offhandedly if this was what it would feel like to become one of _them_, experiencing every last living cell awash with the prickle and sting that preceded the eventual purging of each drop of blood that coursed through my veins and took up valuable space inside my almost-bursting heart… but I knew it wouldn't be that simple. Edward had already summed up the severity of the physical suffering one had to endure in order to cross over, but (and the thought only entered my mind for a millisecond) wouldn't it be worth it to endure _that_ type of pain for what would relatively seem like seconds if it meant being with him… being free from _this_ pain… forever?

I hadn't let my mind linger on this argument for more than a brief flash before forcing it back to reality. _He's GONE. It's not going to happen. Now snap out of it, you're wasting valuable time._

Right. The photos.

I'd just about worn my knees to the bone searching every relevant room in the house, under furniture, in drawers, on dusty bookshelves… meticulously rummaging through literally all of Charlie's possessions then painstakingly returning each item I'd disturbed to its original position, right down to his three-quarters-of-an-inch-open nightstand drawer. Why I'd even bothered to be so scrupulous, I had no idea. I could have taken a shampoo bottle and planted it on his dresser and he probably would have just convinced himself that he'd had an absentminded moment after showering this morning. Regardless…

I couldn't quite put my finger on _why _it felt so important to me, but finding the photos remained, in my mind, the final piece to a puzzle that I _needed_ to solve in order to face Jacob again. I just had to _see_ what Charlie had been talking about for myself.

Maybe if I saw her I would remember… I needed to remember _something._

And now I'd found them.

Of _course_ he wouldn't just put them in an album on a shelf like every other normal person on the planet. Instead they were on the floor of the unorganized linen closet that contained everything _but_ linens in a shoebox with "Pictures Etc." scrawled across the lid in Charlie's nearly illegible handwriting. The box was wedged carelessly between the ancient, dejected Hoover that Charlie stubbornly refused to throw away, and a salvaged blue milk crate containing mostly extension cords, an old car battery, and half a dozen unused mousetraps.

Obviously_ this _was the definitive spot to house your precious memories! Silly Bella, _why_ didn't you check here _first?_

My anxiety having abated somewhat, the enigmatic parcel now clutched in my sweaty grasp, I glanced surreptitiously from left to right even though I knew the house was deserted apart from myself and possibly a few stress-free rodents. I marched quickly into my bedroom, bouncing onto the squeaky mattress and propping my shoulder blades up against the headboard. I reached over and yanked open the drapes to let in some natural light before turning back to the box.

Most would have torn the lid off immediately, but I paused.

As a child I'd invented this game for myself where every time I was offered a coveted item, I'd try to wait as long as I possibly could before finally allowing myself to have it. On one occasion I'd kept a milk chocolate Easter bunny in plain view on my dresser for a solid, torturous week… on another I'd buried ten birthday dollars from my grandmother in the backyard for almost a whole _month_, unearthing it only after coming to the rather reasonable decision – at least in my twelve-year-old opinion – to spend it on a puppy… or put it in a savings account, which really _was _a better idea, _thanks_ Mom…

The _point _was, the anticipation gave me an unparalleled rush, which was why I waited about two minutes, my eager hands compressing the cardboard's outer walls, exhilaration coursing through my veins like a drug, heart beating audibly, neck muscles tensed, stomach turning manic somersaults, toes curled, lips pursed, teeth compacted, eyes focused, breath held…

…before ultimately opening it.

Surveying the contents, I had to keep my teeth clenched to try and ward away the stress that released inside me like a water balloon bursting. Some of the prints were still in their original 1-hour-photo envelopes, but most were just piled in the bottom of the box, no order, no reason, no effort, no problem… for Charlie. No wonder he got along with Jake so well, they were both organizationally challenged. I closed my eyes and took a cleansing breath in through my nose, exhaling and forcing myself to ignore the anarchy that was _the box_.

All things considered, the photos probably only totalled about a hundred. I had figured that Charlie's portion of our family's snapshots would be miniscule in comparison to the reams and reams of pages that Renee kept bound in satiny-covered, carefully labelled scrapbooks (the impressive products of one of her countless hobbies) back in Phoenix… well, Jacksonville now. She had evidently won out not only for custody of me, but also for the lion's share of our sentimental material possessions.

I glanced once more at the writing on the lid of the box, clueless as to what this _Etc._ nonsense suggested unless it was in reference to the negatives that had been cast to one side, loosely folded accordion-style and fanning out slightly to half-conceal their paper counterparts. Whoa… photos taken with actual _film_. This was sure to be good… _sure_ to be what I was looking for.

I lifted one of the envelopes and removed the first stack of twenty-four, careful not to get my fingerprints on the glossy coating. As I flipped through the bundle, I realized that almost all of them seemed to feature _only_ Charlie and Renee: Charlie and Renee camping… Charlie and Renee at Pike Place market… Charlie and Renee with some anonymous friends posing cheerfully at a New Years party…

They were smiling genuinely in each one, him looking much slimmer and less weary than I could ever remember having seen him, her with vibrant, liberally-applied makeup and that same reckless, childlike air about her.

The fact that these photos even existed, let alone that Charlie had decided to _keep _them caused my insides to churn with conflicting emotions. Renee hadn't kept _any_ pictures from when she and my father were together, or if she _had_ kept them they definitely weren't proudly displayed in the albums right next to the ones of me losing the 4th grade spelling bee to that self-righteous brat Holly Connell, or practicing the tried and tested 'duck and cover' technique during my first - and last - basketball game.

After a few minutes of trying to decide if the images of my parents made me feel happy or sad, I decided that it was ridiculous to even consider sadness. Charlie and Renee really had loved each other once, the photos verified that fact, and _I_ had been the result of that love… how could that possibly be a bad thing?

"_Besides,"_ my stupid logic-conscience butted in once again,_ "they may be estranged and divorced but at least they're both still alive…"_

I ignored the voice, dropping the Charlie and Renee envelope beside me on the mattress and reaching for the next one. As I removed the batch of photos I was immediately transported back three hours in time to when I'd casually thrown Charlie a curveball in the kitchen:

_"How well did you know Mrs. Black?"_

I actually gasped when I saw her, bringing my hand up to cover my mouth in that old cliché gesture of astonishment. My heart suddenly began ricocheting off the inside of my ribcage.

…Charlie was right.

I actually shook my head in disbelief even though there was no one else in the room to witness it. Charlie's reply came rushing back to me, the images from the shoebox now filling in the blanks…

"_You mean Jake's mom?" He questioned, raising one eyebrow._

_I cringed slightly upon hearing his name in conjunction with that other word… the m-o-m word. _

"_Jeez Bells, I've known Billy and Sarah since we were all in our early twenties. I was a groomsman at their wedding, for God's sake."_

"_Oh."_

_He squinted at me, obviously puzzled, "Why do you ask?"_

"_Oh nothing, just… well Jacob's never really told me anything about her before and he sort of… mentioned something the other day. I guess I've just had a lot of time to think and… I was curious what she was like."_

"_Why didn't you just ask Jake the other day when he mentioned it?"_

_"Um…y'know. The subject sort of… changed before I got the chance to."_

I _hadn't _told Charlie that it wasn't that the subject had changed _per-se_, but that I'd succeeded with blunt force in essentially reducing Jake to tears.

Ugh. The image of his face at that moment swam unwillingly back into my mind. Up until six days ago I hadn't thought it was even possible for anyone, _especially_ me, to cause Jacob – my perpetually sunny, goofy, sarcastic Jacob - to look like _that_…to look so broken.

I stared at the photo… at her. Something about her, Jake's mom – Sarah - had struck a chord during that… conversation Jake and I'd had. It now seemed ridiculous, but I'd never once considered what most would have deemed obvious: that Jake _hadn't_ simply waltzed through the tragedy of her death, emerging shortly thereafter slightly world-weary yet beaming his usual smile, never to look back in sorrow again. My short-sightedness sickened me even now as I drilled my light brown eyes into the vivacious, sparkling two-dimensional black ones on the leaf of paper in my hand.

_I widened my eyes at Charlie, imploring him to continue_.

_"Well," He sighed pensively, "I mean she was a beautiful girl, that's for sure. I always told Billy I couldn't believe he'd managed to get a hold of the likes of her." He scratched the back of his head, pondering a long-lost mental image. "She was quite-_

Tall. Standing in the middle of a large group of people, mostly men, and most of whom were undoubtedly from the reservation, she had about two inches on the average member of the collective. The only person who was noticeably taller than her was the one whose broad, strapping shoulder supported her casually-slung arm. I had to squint and almost touch the paper to my nose to make sure it really was Billy; he looked so different… so young, and strong, and… upright. His arm was looped protectively around her waist, but she definitely didn't look like the kind of girl who needed to be protected. Her expression was one that dared any man to defy her, chin raised self-assuredly, not slouching whatsoever to downplay her impressive stature.

_-compared to most women, I guess."_

_He held up his right forearm vertically, wrist bent at a right angle gesturing somewhere near his eyeline to illustrate his point, then shrugged with a grin, "Well… not nearly as enormous as your buddy Jake there, but really… THAT kid is something else." He allowed his head to shake effortlessly from side to side in amused bewilderment. Jacob's recent growth spurt must have seemed a tad abnormal to Charlie._

_His eyes glazed over again, "But yeah, I mean she was definitely a catch. Billy was a lucky man."_

The second picture, taken on the same flawlessly blue-skied day, featured just Billy and Sarah still standing side-by-side, but closer up. One of her arms still hung over his shoulder, the other bent at the elbow hanging loosely in front of his chest, fingers locked together at his collarbone.

A tiny, ambiguous white speck glinted between the last two knuckles on her left ring finger, the glint produced by the sun's strong rays concealing the item in question. I wished that I was able to make out the ring's detail, and wondered at the same time if Billy still had it somewhere, maybe hidden in her old jewellery case or locked up in a safe deposit box. The thought caused me to swallow heavily as I flipped through several more photos spanning two decades (the envelope was a ruse – there was no order to be found here) most containing unfamiliar faces, before finally landing on one that simultaneously lifted and broke my heart.

"_What did she look like?"_

_He sighed, "You know, it's a shame, my damned memory… as time passes it gets harder and harder to picture her exactly as she was. Kind of makes me realize just how long she's been gone," his restless middle finger traced a meditative loop over a faint coffee-cup stain that had marred the table's surface for years, "sometimes I still find it hard to believe…"_

_He hesitated thoughtfully, one corner of his lips jerking upward as he released a single, silent laugh._

_"I do remember she had the most amazing smile. It was one that could light up a room every time-"_

_"Like the sun…" I distractedly interrupted with vague astonishment._

_"Yeah… that's right," he was beaming fully now, "it was never fake. If she wasn't happy she'd never force a smile. We used to try like hell to get her to make any other face in photos because every single one had her smiling that exact same smile."_

This was where Charlie had effectively planted the seed in my head that would later blossom into my full-on hunt for the pictures. Now sitting here, limply grasping a small fraction of them in my tired hands, my tingling eyes roaming over the topmost image, I began to understand why I'd felt compelled as if by fate to find them.

It was a different day in this shot… a different _year_ even, but that very same smile was still gleaming on her slightly aged face, the smile Charlie had mentioned. Her cheek was nestled in a mass of short, wavy black locks.

I couldn't see the face of the child that was propped up on her hip, but I didn't have to. The date scanned digitally onto the bottom of the frame only served to solidify my certainty. I counted backwards in my head… even at three years old he had the same smooth bronzed skin, the same thick, silky hair, the same bare feet with the second toe only slightly longer than the first… He was hiding from the camera on purpose, shoulders hunched up and face pressed into the side of her neck, partially hidden by her long, dark hair.

_"She had this crazy thick, long, beautiful black hair. I remember back in the 80's she decided to let it grow really, really long for a good 5 years or so. It was all the way down to her hips… then one day she just chopped it all off to here" he held his hand up horizontally a few inches below his earlobe as if illustrating where to direct an axe should you wish to properly behead someone._

_"Did it herself. We couldn't believe it, but that was just her way. If she decided on something it got done, no questions necessary, no time to wait or ask for permission. Billy…" a brief eruption of laughter escaped his throat "…man, was he ever upset. But she just laughed at him, said it was only hair. He made her promise never to cut it that short again, and she never did, though she'd always complain right in his face when the kids would grab it and pull on it when they were too little to know any better."_

I scanned the snapshot smiling crookedly, my mouth hanging open in awe…

…and Charlie had said his memory was no good.

Sure enough, Jake's tiny fist, the one that was clutching at the neck of her knobby wool sweater, was half tangled in her hair, and though she was smiling as if nothing was wrong I could see that her head was hunched forward just slightly to alleviate the pull on the few strands he had a hold of.

_"She always complained that one of her eyes was... squintier than the other. Is that even a word? Squintier? I don't know. Anyways, for the life of me I couldn't see it. I think everyone has something that they don't like about the way they look, but she didn't have much to pick from, that's for sure."_

I didn't see it either; it seemed to me that both eyes were convincingly symmetrical. She was beautiful, for sure, but not at all in that typical, superficial way. Her beauty came from somewhere that wasn't visible in any photo. Just like…

I felt my heart swell with a mixture of joy and sorrow. The parallels between the two of them were becoming so numerous in my head that I had lost count. It made me sink fully back into my exchange with Charlie, the pictures dropping onto my lap as I leaned my head back against the wall and allowed my eyes to slide shut. The still-persistent sunlight filtered through my membranous lids and produced a bright coral glow, warming my face as I drifted back…

"_She was one of the most generous people I've ever known. Probably the most generous person I've ever known, actually. I mean sure she was stubborn, really, really stubborn when she wanted to be, and fiercely protective, but if you needed anything from her…" I could see the cogs in his mind turning. _

"_When your mom and I first moved into this house she was pregnant with you. We still had most of our stuff in storage, including the bed. Sarah hadn't even known your mother for very long, but she absolutely insisted that we stay at their house until the moving vans got sorted, and they didn't even have a spare bed. She and Billy slept on the floor of what would later be Jake's room. They would not take no for an answer. Wouldn't even let us get a hotel… those days were tight, money-wise. We stayed there for three, maybe four nights. Like I said, the old memory is fuzzy."_

_"So the four of you… you spent a lot of time together?"_

"_When you were a baby, before the two of you moved away… definitely. Sarah had just gone through the whole baby thing… twice, so she was Renee's sounding board. She was so natural as a mom. When we'd first heard she was going to be having twins we all feared for her sanity, but she just settled right into that role as if she'd been waiting her entire life for those babies to come._

_" She used to play with you kids on the beach for hours and hours. We'd just sit there watching her, thinking, 'How the hell does she have the energy to keep up with them all?'"_

_His eyes expanded in emphasis, "Especially Jake. That kid was… exuberant to put it mildly. Hah…" he chuckled, staring off into space, allowing the memories to rush back easily, "I remember the twins would never let him play with them, so he'd loiter around us mostly, and we'd concoct all these menial tasks for him to do, stuff like – go find the absolute shiniest rock on the beach and bring it back to us. Or uh… Oh! Go find a four-leaf clover from the back yard…" His laughter continued, only now more forcefully._

"…_That one he never actually accomplished, but he looked for a good hour, I swear! That's some pretty serious dedication. He must have only been… I don't know, five or six?"_

"_You guys were so cruel!" I laughed, imagining them coming up with new and creative schemes to keep Jake out of their hair._

_"Oh just wait 'til you have kids, Bella, you'll understand."_

_I bowed my head to hide the pain that flickered across my face as he said this. Until now I'd never really considered having children, because the only relationship I'd ever planned on being in had one relatively minor setback: as a bona fide card-carrying member of the Undead, I didn't exactly think I'd possess the capacity to procreate._

_He continued without even registering the delicate ache that blazed fleetingly across my features, "Besides, we didn't just do it so he'd leave us alone, it wasn't like he was a bad kid, he just always needed something to do. I guess the best word to describe him back then would be restless… plus he just ate up any praise we'd give him for doing what we'd asked, especially if it was coming from her."_

I remembered when I'd come to Jake with the impossible task of fixing those seemingly irreparable bikes. He hadn't even hesitated to accept the challenge, and when he'd finally completed them I'd never seen anyone so eager to receive my gratitude. Knowing that Charlie had played a part in conditioning Jacob to be so diligent seemed ironic now; if only he'd known that Jake would grow up to diligently manufacture me a shiny, forbidden, hazardous new toy.

_"The main reason we gave him the damned assignments was to tire him out. That was always a challenge; he would dig his heels in when she told him it was time to go to bed. He absolutely refused to be removed from the excitement. I always told Sarah he got his persistence from her, but she never wanted to hear it. Always shot me the most evil looks when I said it. But yeah, I've never seen a child with so much energy and yet so much… focus. Even now with those cars… I mean what 14 year old kid just decides he's going to start building cars?"_

_I smiled in agreement. "Yeah he's got focus when it comes to the cars, but have you seen his bedroom? That could use some focus…"_

_"Hah! That hasn't changed then, has it? Yeah, she was always on him about that, too. Actually, she broke her ankle once from stepping on one of his little… truck things. Apparently on the way to the hospital she lost her temper at him for leaving his stuff all over the floor. He was pretty upset about it… practically waited on her hand and foot for almost two months while it healed. That provided us with dozens of missions to send him on…"_

I flipped through the stack of pictures again, trying to see if I could find one of her in a cast or with crutches, something to verify the anecdote, but there weren't any.

"_But, damn did she ever love those kids." He was staring sadly at the tabletop now. I could tell this was starting to get a little hard for him._

_"You too, Bells. She used to call you… the little scientist…?" His voice raised as if in question at the end. He glanced up just over my head, a look of dissatisfaction on his face, as though his thoughts had suddenly become muddled_

_"… no, no, professor, that's it," he nodded, "The Little Professor," He barked an abrupt laugh, "because you always had your nose in some book, and then later you'd wait until you had our entire attention to reiterate what you'd read to us._

_"There was one summer that you arrived to visit – you would have been nine – and at the airport I'd bought you this kid's encyclopedia all about the Pacific Ocean. That summer we'd go to First Beach and you'd find pieces of seaweed, tiny crabs, barnacles… oh and of course the seashells," he raised his eyebrows at me, "those were your favourite." I flashed back to my bedroom in Phoenix, and a Mason jar that sat on my dresser filled to the brim with various shells._

_"You'd bring each one over to us and tell us exactly what it was, where it came from and what it did. Sarah'd listen to you so carefully, and I mean REALLY listen, not like how adults usually half-listen to little kids when they're going on about something they like. She'd ask you all kinds of questions and you'd know every answer… even if you didn't you'd just make them up. I'm really surprised you don't remember any of this, Bells."_

_I shrugged my shoulders. I wanted to remember something, anything so badly, but every time I tried my mind just came up blank._

Picking up the box again, I began to shuffle through the loose pictures at the bottom. Some were square-shaped and looked rather old, the colors faded and with scalloped white borders around the edges, depicting Charlie in his teens… probably around my age or just slightly younger. I kept looking, trying to see if I could find any one picture that might jog my memory, anything with me and her together.

Then I found something… several things, actually.

Considering that I hadn't even known that they existed, these definitely constituted an inadvertently discovered jackpot. They were all taken on the same day in relatively rapid succession. The first few were of me alone, probably about six years old, beaming and barefoot on the sun-warmed sand of First Beach grasping a pink and yellow starfish patterned bucket in both hands and wearing a ruffled red and white polka-dot one-piece swimsuit. My hair was short and ridiculously curly, pale skin showing the slightest trace of sunburn, my smile wide and gap-toothed.

As I continued to flip slowly through the bunch, I came across the _real _jackpot: dozens, and I mean _dozens_ of pictures of Jake and I together. Me with my bony, scabby knees and crazy curls, Jake all sun-bronzed and mop-headed, a pair of navy swim trunks tied around his still slightly chubby middle. I was scrawny and pink and missing some integral incisors. He was just damned cute.

I noticed that there was definitely a chronological order that had been abandoned. After about five minutes, I managed to rearrange them in the most linear fashion I could imagine, so that if I were to grip one corner of the stack and flick my opposite thumb down the edges rapidly, a choppy yet understandable silent narrative would play out, almost like one of those old Buster Keaton films that Charlie loved so much. Instead, I worked my way slowly through them placing one behind the other in a constant cycle, reaching the end and then starting from the beginning again.

[Jake is squatting down as low as possible on the wet sand holding a stick in his round fist, arm raised threateningly, undoubtedly preparing to whack the crap out of something distasteful on the ground. His free arm is curled up and pressed into his side, fingers gripping his kneecap. I'm bending down on the opposite side of the shot shooting him a disapproving look, laboriously filling my bucket with sand.]

_flip…_

[He's kneeling now, rear end resting on his heels and cradling something small in both hands, inspecting it thoroughly while I, having flipped my bucket upside down, continue to glare in his general direction.]

_flip…_

[My arms are extended in front of me and I'm focusing every last speck of my attention on lifting the overturned bucket cautiously whilst disturbing as few grains of sand within as humanly possible. Jake has resumed walloping whatever was offending him in the sand with that stick.]

_flip…_

_flip…_

_flip…_

There were several more of these: Jake doing _his_ thing and me doing _my_ thing. Then…

[He's approached my castle, now comprised of three immaculate sand cylinders. I'm holding bucket number four, hauling it over to the construction site.]

_flip…_

[He's still gripping the stick, but it's now hanging limply at his side, his expression the epitome of artificial innocence. One of my cylinders is destroyed. I've dropped the bucket.]

_flip…_

[I'm looking directly into the lens - behind which I can only assume is Charlie - with the crabbiest possible glare, my petulant mouth cavernous with muted whining. I'm extending one accusatory finger at Jake, whose stick has mysteriously vanished and who is now focused on something outside the shot.]

_flip…_

[A headless body with tanned legs and a short floral sundress has now entered the frame, its hand gently gripping Jake's tousled head. He's persisting with his guiltless act, his wide black eyes lacking any trace of confession. I'm facing the two of them, my back to the camera.]

_flip…_

[Sarah's kneeling down now and is after having cleared the disaster area. My bucket is once again upended between her long, slender, steady fingers right where the previous tower had fallen. She's flashing me her smile… _the_ smile. Jake's hanging over her shoulder observing her, awestruck.]

_flip…_

_flip…_

_flip…_

[Dozens of additional pillars have now been forged, amalgamated to take the shape of an authentic medieval castle with Dixie-cup-molded towers topped by seaweed flags, smooth pebble pathways meandering amidst the various columns, and a hand-dug moat with a driftwood drawbridge perilously spanning its depth. She's dexterously pressing clamshell-fragment windows into the sides of the turrets. I'm smiling from ear to ear, laughing up at Charlie and motioning towards our handiwork. Jake is hunched over in the far background, possibly either committing another act of hermit crab homicide or collecting more shells for us.]

Of the entire cluster of photos, about half of them include us making final touches on, or posing with this completed masterpiece, a truly magnificent specimen of sandcastle artistry. I'm alternatively shown crouching down to inspect its detail and bouncing around it like a lunatic. Jake pops in and out of the completed-castle shots as well, his hand fused to hers, trailing along in her fluid wake.

The last shot - or at least the one I placed last because the vacant background, expansive sand and surging waves petrified in mid-collapse, did nothing to imply its sequential status– was my favourite. The rational, grown-up part of me _knew_ that this was just a 'say you're sorry' parent-guilt-trip moment, but without the context of the rest of the pictures it could have been something entirely sweeter.

[Jacob is smiling, or possibly laughing, his mouth open wide and his eyes clenched shut giddily. His small arms are wrapped all the way around my waist, pinning _my_ right arm to my side. The look of surprise on my face suggests that I hadn't until that very second anticipated having a four-year old welded to my side. My neck is stretched up like a startled bird's, face rotated slightly in his direction with sharply arched eyebrows and slightly parted lips. My free left arm is raised and bent at the elbow, my fingers curled loosely into a ball as if holding an invisible lantern.]

I wanted to dissolve into tears. Even after seeing it all with my own eyes… I'd been _sure _that it would be enough… but still…

Nothing. None of this brought back even the slightest ghost of a memory. I felt like I'd lost something that I'd only just realized was mine... something that I now _knew_ I wasn't going to retrieve, like a wedding ring that had accidentally been thrown in the trash, and like the crestfallen bride in this unfortunate scenario, I now had to accept the unalterable truth.

_"The year after I bought you that book was the one summer you didn't come to visit… Renee said it was something like ballet camp or… anyways, that was the year that…" He bobbed his head and swallowed forcefully._

_"I suppose that's why you don't really remember her. By the time you came back again we were all trying so hard not to bring it up in front of Jake. But Billy talks about her all the time now. Jake's seriously never mentioned anything about her? I thought you two talked all the time. She's never come up in conversation?"_

_I shook my head, an almost too-laid-back look in my eyes to try and hide the fact that I was thinking about our last conversation, the one where he finally had brought her up._

"_Doesn't really surprise me I guess," I could see that he was now exhuming an especially painful memory, "I mean –and this is just between you and me, Bells– the kid was a wreck when she died. The change in his personality was like night and day. He went from this hyperactive whirlwind of a little boy to just…" he swiped his hand through the air as if he were trying to disperse smoke, "…nothing."_

"_I had no idea…" I mouthed robotically._

"_The girls… the twins, they cried for months straight. That in itself was gut-wrenching to see, but Jake - it was like he wasn't even around anymore. Stopped talking pretty much altogether. Wouldn't want to go anywhere or do anything. Billy had to essentially drag him from the house. They'd come over here and, I remember this so clearly, I would try to ask him questions about his day, or school, and it was literally like he couldn't even hear me. That was probably the saddest thing about it all, having to see him like that, seeing all that energy, all that spirit just… disappear. _

I stared at the tiny Jacob with his arms clamped around my skinny frame. The shards of my heart twisted painfully inside me as I picked up and examined each picture of him, longing to flush out the information that Charlie had fed me this morning… to return to a state where Jake was just my happy, supportive friend, where I had no idea what the naive child smiling brightly in these photos would ultimately be forced to endure.

I double-checked all the pictures, but there were absolutely none that showed him any older than about seven. This could have just been a coincidence, but from what Charlie had mentioned I got the impression that Jake wouldn't exactly have been the most photogenic kid after her death.

I tried to imagine Jacob as an empty vessel, a sullen, disillusioned boy who had given up on smiling, laughing, or even speaking… but I just couldn't picture Jacob as anyone but _m_y Jacob. Imagining him as lifeless was like trying to imagine Edward as human; I had no doubt that both had certainly been the case at some point, but the idea still seemed distant… theoretical… preposterous. Jacob _was _life. He represented to me the triumphant, relentless beating of every heart on earth, the legitimacy of hope itself.

_"After a few years he gradually became more personable, but it wasn't until recently, not 'til he started up on those cars that I could really see some of that old Jake come back into him again. I mean, you've seen the guy now, it's like you just can't wipe the smile off his face. It's that same smile… hers, the one she gave for every single photo-"_

That was _it_… what had made me gasp when I'd first laid eyes on that image of her and Billy. In the kitchen I had heard Charlie say it, but it wasn't until I _saw_ her that I actually got it.

I took every picture of her that I'd found, all eight of them, and absently ran through them one at a time. As I did so, all I could see was Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob. Her smile was indistinguishable from his. It was almost eerie, like a part of her ghost had come back to remain lodged in Jake's body… the mouth part.

_"-Every time I see him get that look on his face it just…" He shook his head wistfully. "I know Billy sees it too. I've been meaning to tell you lately just how great it is that you've made such an effort to be his friend. I know it means a lot to Billy, and I think you've helped Jake out more than you know."_

_It was all I could do not to break down in tears right there at the table. Charlie's praise was the last thing I felt worthy of._

"_I don't have to make an effort with Jake. He makes everything… effortless."_

"_He's a good kid," Charlie said with satisfaction, "You too, Bells. She'd definitely be proud. You can tell him I said that." He aimed a playful finger at me like a shotgun, standing up and pushing his chair back across the hardwood with his legs._

_"Did all that answer your question?" he grinned at me._

_"Definitely. Thanks, Dad."_

_He lifted and shook out his jacket, which had been hanging on the corner of the chair, "I'm gonna head into town, make some use of my day off. I gotta go pick up those new fly rods that Billy and I ordered, they're holding them at Newton's. Thanks for the discount, by the way." He winked at me "You want to tag along?" He paused, crossing his legs at the ankles and leaning against the stove._

"_No thanks, I've actually got some… homework I have to do."_

"_Jake coming over?" He smiled knowingly._

_I racked my brain for a suitable answer "No I think he's busy today…something about uh… finding parts for some new…car." If Charlie'd had a perceptive bone in his body he would have clearly been able to see right through my bold-faced lie, but it sailed over his head like a wayward Frisbee. "I'm just studying alone today."_

"_Okay little miss ambitious…"_

"_You should talk, Mr. Spontaneous Crossword." I flicked the paper open again, exposing his utter failure to the world. _

"_Don't you touch that, I'm saving it for later." He directed a mock-threatening sneer at me and then proceeded down the hallway towards the front door. _

I hastily shoved the photos back into the box, all except one. I pulled out the negatives and held them up one sheet at a time to the light of the blazing afternoon sun.

Please be here… Please be here…

It took a few minutes but I found it – the entire roll from that day on the beach. I slid the appropriate strip from its plastic sleeve and held the original up beside it to make sure they were one in the same.

_Charlie's voice boomed from the doorway, as if he had to shout for me to hear him "Hey Bells d'you mind I take your truck? I could use the extra cargo space."_

"_Yeah go ahead. If it doesn't start right away just keep trying it, it's been acting up lately."_

"_It might just be the starter. I can take it down to Jake later on if you want him to take a look at it-"_

"_NO!" I shouted a little too loudly, taking a second to amend my voice before continuing, "I mean, I'm seeing him tomorrow… I'll show him then. It's not going to die on you or anything, I promise. Plus I want to be there with him when he looks at it so I can explain what's wrong."_

"_OK, ok. You sure you won't need it today? I'll probably be out for a while"_

"_I'm sure, not today."_

I took the original photo and walked over to my closet, securing it on the inside of the door at eye-level with a thumbtack. Charlie would never notice it was missing, and the chances of him finding it here were slim to none.

I put the negative in the pocket of my hoodie and returned the shoebox to its original nest alongside the milk crate before bounding down the stairs two at a time.

Grabbing Charlie's abandoned crossword pen, I scribbled him a hasty note even though I knew I'd probably be back before him anyways.

_Dad,_

_Gone for a walk. Don't spaz._

_Bells._

* * *

I'd stuck to the main road on my way into town, but the heat from the sun was so intense that I'd decided to opt for the forest route on the way back. The light filtered through the canopy just enough to make the greenery come alive, and I was suddenly reminded of a similar day not so long ago, armed with a map and a compass, listening to a familiar, cheerfully melodious whistle that had bobbed past the branches to reach my ears a few feet behind.

Tomorrow I would fix everything, I'd decided. I still hadn't quite hammered out the details but I knew I had to at least try talking to him… if he'd let me. I couldn't stomach the thought of possibly going another week without seeing my best…

_Hmmm… Do you still deserve to call him that?_

I thought about it. Supposedly Jake was my best friend, yet after the revelations I'd had today I now felt like I knew so little about him. We'd spent almost all of our childhood summers together and yet I couldn't even remember a single thing. Not one conversation, one anecdote, one image remained. Only tiny black holes dotted my memory, blurring out the mysterious boy with whom I'd spent so many summers in La Push. The photos in the shoebox were all I had to prove that I'd known him forever.

I paused again, considering the word:

Forever.

I'd only ever thought about it in terms of Edward, its meaning infinite, stretching out eternally into the future.

Yet…Jacob represented forever as well, only in an entirely different, and surprisingly more _complete_ way.

I'd known Jake _forever_.

_Since_ ever.

Ever since…

I removed the newly-printed photo from my sweatshirt pocket. It had taken the standard hour to reproduce, which had allowed me some time to wander around town, avoiding the general vicinity of Newton's, getting some much-needed exercise.

When the photo clerk had handed me back the almost empty envelope, I'd immediately flipped it open to inspect her handiwork, grinning once again at the image that appeared to me within the rectangular outline. The clerk -_Diane_ according to her nametag- had peeked unashamedly at my prized possession, gesturing with her flawlessly French-manicured fingertip at the child on the right.

"Is that you?"

I nodded cheerfully at her.

"I can tell," she glanced intermittently from my face to the photo, "your nose… and your cheekbones, they're exactly the same." I felt myself blushing slightly under her scrutiny. "And who's that little guy?"

I gently ran my fingertips over the smaller, darker, clearly more enthusiastic figure on the left of the print, having opted this time for a matte finish so as to pre-emptively avoid the smudges that I knew his clumsy fingers were sure to inflict.

"That's my best friend." I'd taken extra care to use the present tense. _Is_, not _was_. "He's not so little anymore." I thrust my hand as high as I could above my head and laughed, straining my neck and nodding to substantiate my demonstration of Jake's true altitude.

She beamed at me. "Isn't that sweet. I haven't known any of my friends for nearly that long. Must be nice to share those kinds of memories…"

I hadn't the heart to tell her that my _lack _of memory was the reason I was there in the first place…

I stopped short as I came within viewing distance of the house, considering a possibility that hadn't really crossed my mind until now.

Did _Jacob_ remember anything? I'd never really asked him before.

_Tomorrow._

I already owed Jacob so much that just thinking about it made my head spin, and now I felt I owed _this_ to him more than anything else: a chance to tell me everything, to hear me say just how much I needed him, to know that we were meant to meet each other for a reason. Because everything happens for a reason… right?

_Even death?_

I pondered my logic-conscience's pertinent question. What _about_ death? I was sure that Jacob, Billy, Rachel, Rebecca… even Seth and Leah Clearwater would regretfully agree that death was simply a part of life… something that we'd all have to deal with sooner or later.

Sooner or later.

Sooner? Or later?

Holy crap.

Had I actually been _asking _myself this question?

I didn't want to admit it, but the truth was right there, standing between me and the house, blocking me from sprinting to the safety of my bed. This whole time… death had been a certainty for me, a shining beacon, an actual _goal._

I thought I might vomit.

I remembered the look on Jake's face after I'd hit him… when he was thinking about her, and though I didn't think I deserved it, I _knew_ he'd look the exact same way upon hearing that I'd finally hurtled myself down the path that led to Edward; to death. I couldn't even bear to think about it. If there was one thing that Jacob had never wavered on it was that he'd rather walk through fire than hurt me like Edward had, but I couldn't remember ever having promised _him_ the same thing. It seemed ridiculous that I hadn't felt the need to assure him of this, and even more ridiculous that I had actually succeeded in causing him pain on numerous occasions, with and without the aid of physical force.

All of a sudden, I felt something sliding down my face. I looked up to check for rain clouds, but all I could see was sunshine – nature had apparently gotten it out of its system. Several more drops slid along my cheeks, and I realized to my shock that I was crying.

I tilted my body against a massive Douglas fir, resting my head against its rough surface, and allowed the droplets to carve diagonal lines across my face, diverting around my nose, following the line of my jaw and settling on the ridge of my collarbone. My face was a blank slate, not a smile or a scowl upon it, just the calm mask of resolution. These were the last tears I would cry today, and once again they wouldn't be for Edward, or even Jacob. They were tears of thanks for the person whom I couldn't for the life of me remember, but who had just helped me realize that my life was something to be valued, something that _should_ mean as much to me as it did to those who loved me.

I transferred my weight onto both feet once again, steadying myself against the tree before heaving a deep breath and walking back towards the house, using the back of my hand to smudge away the only tears I'd ever cry for Sarah Black.

* * *

**A/N**

**Yay for ridiculously long chapters! This one almost gave me a stress-headache. Jumping backwards and forwards in time, even if all of the events of the chapter essentially happened in the same _day_, is confusing to say the least. Add to this the fact that I'm anal retentive when it comes to verb tense and the reason for the stress-headache really becomes self-evident. Please let me know what you think of the story if you get the chance. I really, really, _really_ appreciate the reviews. The next chapter will definitely be the conclusion. It's almost finished already, but I still want to tweak it a bit just to make sure I get everything in there that I want.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Well, here's another long one. Thought I'd go out with a bang. Enjoy!**

* * *

CHAPTER 5

He was ruining the Plan.

I pulled the key from the ignition and tossed it on the passenger seat, reaching over with my right arm as I did so to crank the window down.

_Now_ I get why people buy brand new cars… _Air Conditioning…_

The truck cab was stifling. Despite the fact that my spirits were about as low as they could possibly get, the sun wasn't taking any cues from me. It blazed merrily through my driver's side window, practically setting me alight like an ill-fated ant on the pavement. My fingers curled around the knob beside me as I eagerly pumped my left arm causing the second window to descend, but of course even a whisper of a breeze would have been too much to ask for.

Defeated, I allowed my forehead to descend until it came to rest on my folded arms, which were draped limply over the steering wheel. As much as I wanted to fade into blackness, I forced my eyes open, staring unblinkingly for what seemed a barely sustainable period of time. The heat in combination with my obstinate restraint from batting an eyelid caused the numbers on the speedometer to seem as though they were spinning - slowly at first, then ultimately screaming past each other, blurring into one. Twenty, forty, sixty… one hundred… one twenty…

Everything around me was rushing past at an uncontrollable velocity: the road, trees, birds, insects, the cliffs alongside my truck, yet the tiny red needle sat lifelessly at zero, resolutely maintaining its state of inertia. It, and myself, seemed like the only two things in the universe that weren't going anywhere.

I closed my eyes to stop the spinning and pounded my head onto my arms dejectedly.

It was already three o'clock… _three o-freaking-clock_ on Sunday, five hours past my original goal, and I felt like I'd wasted more time searching for Jacob today than I had pawing through boxes of old paint cans and gratuitous _Field and Stream_ archives yesterday… but _yesterday_ had actually proven s_uccessful _in the end. Today was shaping up to be a monumental letdown.

-----

Earlier this morning I'd arisen in tandem with the sun and forced myself to wait until about nine thirty before finally getting into my truck and allowing the almost magnetic pull that had been struggling to drag me to La Push this entire week to finally have its way with me. The drive had felt so liberating, like I had been holding my own head under water this whole time trying foolishly to break some kind of oxygen-deprivation record, and now, as I shattered across the treaty line, I was breaking the surface, feeling every last square inch of my lungs fill with nourishing, mouth-watering air.

But this easy breathing had ceased again as I'd pulled up outside his house.

The Rabbit was in the driveway. I checked my watch, trying to hold my trembling arm steady with my other, also trembling hand… almost ten. Zero hour.

I barely noticed myself descending from the cab of the truck when a strange sense of déjà vu hit me...

In the past, every single time I'd traversed the meandering La Push highway to arrive at this _very_ point, the sequence of events had always played out the same, like clockwork, like dominoes falling:

_The slamming of the truck door makes the front curtains part, exposing a sliver of darkness inside before swinging closed again. My feet take me along the path, up the steps, and across the porch. My hand levitates as if to knock but never actually gets the chance to follow through. The door swings open, and I am in his arms._ _Every time like clockwork, like dominoes falling: truck, window, path, steps, door, Jacob. _

The truck door connected noisily with the cab.

The curtains didn't move.

I allowed myself to inhale again.

My knuckles made brusque, repetitive contact with the front door on three, four, five separate attempts with nearly one-minute intervals in between each try. I gripped my waist with both hands, elbows jutting out to either side like I was imitating a chicken, and felt my head tilt back, allowing my gaze to wander up into the rafters that supported the overhang as if he might be hiding up there somewhere. I hadn't really anticipated my line of attack extending any further than this. So now what?

I thumped back down the steps, hands still glued to my sides, and, after reaching the front lawn, spun in a calculated 360, allowing my eyes to scan every possible space in which an almost seven-foot boy might possibly fit…

Then the obvious occurred to me…of course, the garage. I jogged around the corner of the house and began to stalk my way towards his usual oasis, but even from this distance I could just _tell_ he wasn't there. Call it uncanny powers of observation, call it intuition, call it a psychic connection. I don't know _how_ I knew he wasn't there; I just _knew_.

As I passed the Rabbit I laid my hand on its hood, spreading my fingers out as though it were a crystal ball; all I had to do was descend drunkenly into a trancelike state and allow it to invade my psyche and tell me where Jake was…

But common sense prevailed over the supernatural: the hood felt cold. He _had_ to be close by.

I realized rather quickly, however, that this logic didn't necessarily succeed in proving anything. If Jake _really _wanted to be far enough away for me to _never_ find him, he definitely wouldn't need a _car_. That boy could be anywhere in North America right now. Hell, he could even be in _South_ America for all I knew.

_This_ theory, however, didn't seem right either.

Maybe it was just that I knew him too well, or maybe it was that damned psychic connection again, but I was beyond certain that phasing would be the _last _thing he'd resort to. He hated having those guys inside his head, and the events of last weekend would have undeniably been something he wouldn't want to share with anyone unless he absolutely _had _to.

So without the aid of the Rabbit, he had to be somewhere in the La Push viscinity. I glanced back at the house again and suddenly got an idea. It wasn't much, but I clung to it like a life preserver. Maybe he just hadn't _heard_ me knocking because he was still-

I darted off in the direction of the garage door, vaguely noticing that the scrap metal –the corroded husk that had impeded my progress during the rainstorm on that fateful day– was gone. Only a thin patch of discoloured grass bordering the driveway betrayed its original position.

Once inside, I stood facing Jake's newest Dr. Frankenstein creation: some sort of homely-looking sports car. My eyes automatically fluttered shut. I listened as carefully as I could, keeping my breathing shallow to eliminate excess noise, subconsciously waiting for two strong arms to reach around from behind me and…

…But this was a different day. I fought back the approaching tears and refocused my scattered mind on the objective at hand.

I seized the first reasonably sizeable blunt item I could find, a heavy toolbox, and literally dragged it by its handle, using the strength of both arms, across the grass and over to his bedroom window.

Even on my tiptoes I could _just_ see inside. I smiled and touched my forehead to the glass; the mess was still as spectacular as it had been six days ago… and… _gross! _

…The dishtowel was still sitting on his bookshelf.

Ugh… boys.

I craned my neck to get a better glimpse of the bed… no Jake. In fact, unless he was squatting under the window, which frankly would have been more than just a little weird, he wasn't in the room at all.

I hopped down angrily and sat on the box, leaning my head back against the house and smashing the heel of my shoe into the soft earth, leaving behind a pleasantly destructive indentation.

No, no, _no_. This was not right. I was supposed to come down here, find Jake, apologize and make him want to be my friend again. I _had _to.

I ran back to my truck and proceeded to drive all over town, all through Forks, and down the main drag in Port Angeles. I drove up and down the La Push highway two, three, four times. I drove by Quil's, Embry's, Sam's, and the Clearwaters'. I went to the beach, the forest, the cliffs, the place where Billy docked his boat, the scrap yard, the road where we practiced with the bikes… _every _place that had even the most remote connection to Jake, but the only thing hidden in these places were my memories… not _him._

_-----_

So now here I was, my head on my arms, the inside of my truck set to broil.

It was three o'clock. I wanted to just give up and go home, but I _had_ to peel myself off of this seat first. I had to breathe some fresh air, so I got out and decided to check the beach one last time before heading back home, back to the bottom of the sea.

The cliffs alongside and overlooking the beach were higher than the ones Jake and I had seen Sam, Paul and Embry jumping off of… the same ones I myself had taken a casual trip over in order to experience an auditory hallucination. _These_ cliffs –the shoreline below peppered with dark, jagged rocks– were unquestionably more menacing, more deadly, especially now at low tide.

I nervously approached the edge and immediately froze in place like a statue. Holy shit this was high. The beach was in plain view, but from what I could see not a soul graced its sprawling, shimmering sand.

I had arrived at my wit's end.

Anyone who witnessed me at that moment would have sworn I'd just completed the North Olympic Marathon. I was gulping the air in immense mouthfuls, hunched over with my hands on my thighs propping up my torso. The view was making my head spin… or maybe it was my fragile emotional state… Regardless, I lifted my chin, this new arrangement facilitating my laboured breathing.

Against the startling azure sky, a magnificent bald eagle was hovering on the tidal wind, head pointed out towards the surf, its wings completely unmoving while allowing the mild draft of air to keep it aloft. I automatically straightened up, spellbound.

_This_ was how I felt at this very moment, like I was suspended in the atmosphere, moving neither up, nor down, nor side to side, just… waiting for something to happen…

And then it did.

"STOP!!! NO!! BELLA, STOP!!!"

I whipped around, my ponytail snapping me in the eye, to see him running towards me full-throttle. I couldn't tell whether or not he had just phased; he was wearing a grey t-shirt and the same shorts from last week, but his feet were bare. The muscles and veins in his neck were visible, and he looked absolutely livid. I braced myself.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?" He screamed at me, grabbing my arm and wrenching me back away from the ledge. He parked himself firmly between my quivering body and the abyss, his heels a mere foot and a half from the edge of the sheer drop.

I wanted to calm him down, but it was hard to even consider doing so when his position near the edge combined with his agitation was making _me_ tense. I pushed this feeling away for a moment, keeping my voice steady. "Jake… I'm-"

"NO. I CAN'T KEEP DOING THIS WITH YOU EVERY SINGLE GODDAMNED TIME, BELLA. GET SOME FREAKING COMMON SENSE, WILL YOU?" He hurled his arm forward from his ear in a chopping motion as he continued to shout, slightly hunched over and breathing hard.

He'd thought I was going to jump. His face, set in a look that only Charlie had ever given me before, said _Don't be so reckless. Don't be stupid. _But his eyes… I couldn't look away from them.

…His eyes were those of a terrified little boy.

His eyes said _Don't disappear. Don't leave me._

I needed to comfort him, but I didn't know how. I realized that I was still tightly clenched, his cliffside status causing my heart to send tremors through my chest.

"Jake, please… move away from there…" I held out my hand a little to indicate I wanted him to come towards me.

He suddenly got a look in his eye like he was Lex Luther and he'd just discovered Kryptonite. He flashed an evil smile and took one tiny step backwards, sending a few small pebbles soaring over the edge.

"JACOB! STOP IT, THAT'S NOT FUNNY!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

"How does it feel, Bella?"

"Get away from there NOW."

"So let me get this straight. It's ok for _you_ to hurtle yourself off a cliff, but not me?"

"I wasn't going to JUMP, Jacob."

"You weren't?"

"NO! I came up here because I was looking for YOU. I needed to get a better view of the beach so I came up to the cliff… I. Wasn't. Going. To. Jump."

I needed to get that terrified look out of his eyes right now. He exhaled and stepped back towards me, knowing that in doing so he was making me exponentially calmer.

I allowed my breathing to slow, glancing up at his face and grilling him, "where the _hell_ did you come from anyways?"

"I was walking back home from Quil's uncle's place and I saw you driving. You looked like crap, so… I followed you."

"Wait…" I closed my eyes and jammed my fingertips into the sockets, rubbing wearily until I saw stars, "I've been combing the entire Olympic _freaking_ Peninsula for you _all day _and here you've been following me this _entire time?"_ I had a fleeting desire to politely ask him to step back towards the edge, reach my hand out just a tad and… oops.

…A _fleeting_ desire.

"Not _all _day, just for the past ten minutes or so." He stared at his feet.

"I couldn't _find _you." The tears threatened once more, but I kept them in.

"Well, I'm here _now,_" he said, looking up frustratingly.

"Yeah… you are."

He stared blankly at me, as if he didn't know what I expected him to say, so I took the lead without any premeditation, trying to feign nonchalance in order to hide the fact that I was nearly crying.

"So…uh… what have you been up to?" _Seriously_, Bella? I groaned inwardly and scrunched up my face, fighting off the overwhelming desire to bring my palm into contact with my forehead.

He raised one eyebrow in slight confusion and then shrugged detachedly, "Y'know… the usual. School, housekeeping, helping Quil chop wood, fixing the alternator on the GT, trying to leave you the hell alone…" His forced aloofness failed to hide the fact that his words contained more venom than the fangs of an agitated rattlesnake.

"Oh…" I felt utterly stupid. He had remembered my _exact_ words.

Then I suddenly remembered some of_ his._

_Have you decided you're done with relationships forever? 'Cause if that's the case then I gotta know so I can stop-_

Holy shit. Why hadn't I remembered this part until _now_?

"Oh my God…" my eyes swayed unfocused back and forth as my brain worked overtime, "you've been _trying _to stay away from me. You said you didn't want to waste any more of your-"

"Uughh..." he groaned, bringing his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "God I was hoping you'd forgotten I'd said that…" He looked like he wanted to punch himself in the face. "In fact, of all the things I wish you'd forget I've ever said… that's number one." He looked at me sadly, "Well maybe it's _tied_ for number one with the whole 'you look like crap' thing…" He scooped his hand back towards his shoulder to indicate his impetuous comment from a few minutes ago.

Every ounce of bitterness and forced control that he'd been striving to uphold was gone. The pain that had moments ago been limited to his eyes now slid across his entire face like an avalanche. "These last six days have been torture for me, Bells. Please, PLEASE just forget about what I said. It's when I'm _not_ with you… that's the only time I feel is completely wasted."

I felt butterflies stir up inside my stomach, my heart suddenly filling with warmth…

Wait... No!

I was ignoring the reason I'd been trying to find him in the first place. I was forgetting all about the Plan. My solution to this was to blurt out the first thing that came to my head:

"I'm sorry I hurt you."

"Huh?"

"Last _week_…"

He tilted his head. "What… _that_?" He said, prodding his left cheek, "are you kidding me? Bells, I outweigh you by, like, a hundred and twenty pounds… it would take a lot more than _that_ to-"

"Shut up, Jake. You _know_ I don't mean… physically." My eyes filled instantly with tears as I remembered the broken look on his face… as I remembered the lifeless boy Charlie had described so vividly. My bottom lip wavered as I drew in an unsteady lungful of air, eyes trained directly on his.

"I _hurt _you. Don't try to pretend I didn't, I was there. I _saw_ it. Jake… " My eyes were brimming, "… I'm so sorry… I didn't know..."

I wanted to extend my arm out to touch him, to hold him, but I wasn't sure he'd let me. "I didn't know about your mom's-"

His palm instantaneously clamped itself over my mouth, his thumb and middle finger just behind my earlobes educing a shiver that ran all the way down my spine. The tears, now freed from the reservoirs of my eyelids, coursed over the back of his hand, forging rivers in between the bulging veins of his unbending wrist.

"Please, don't." He said with more conviction than I'd ever witnessed in him before. "It's in the past. It's okay. _I'm _okay."

I ripped his arm away from my face, "NO!" I'd intended to speak resonantly and maturely, but my emotional state caused it to come out as a demented squeak. "Please, please let me say this. I've been waiting all goddamned week just to apologize to you so now you're going to _listen_ to me!"

I could feel my face growing redder by the second. "I'm sorry. Not only for…" I flicked my wrist demonstratively at my side, "… doing… the thing…"

"You mean bitch-slapping me?" He was being asinine on purpose. I glared at him, my upset mouth quivering uncontrollably.

Then, whatever tiny fragments of composure I'd managed to keep a hold of fell like marbles out of my hands, bounced across the pavement, and rolled into a sewer grate. My face contorted as my breath hitched, "Ja-ake please stop tr-trying to be _funny_," I sobbed, "I'm tr-trying to apologize to y-you and you're… you're acting like nothing even ha-ha-happened."

I was bawling hysterically now, trying to summarize everything I'd wanted to say to him, everything I'd listed off in my head these past six days, in between sobs.

"I _need_ you," I moaned, "sometimes so badly that I forget that you ha-have… _feelings_ that I'm hurting every single da-day that I'm with you." His facial expression and his body language were begging me to stop, but I'd _hardly_ checked everything off the list yet…

"…and I AM self-centered, and I'm sor…" I heaved a breath, "I'm _sorry_ for being self centered, and I'm sorry for hitting you and I'm so-orry for making you cry and for making you feel ba-bad because of your mom, and I'm sorry for not _knowing, _and I _promise_ I'll never hurt you again, or at least I'll _try_ to never hurt you again because... because seeing you in pain…… Jake… I……..I…………."

My voice had reached a decibel level only discernible to dogs and high-frequency sonar receivers. I didn't even have the ability to speak the last words – the most important ones. My body was bent double, my spine pitching up and down like waves on a stormy sea as the sobs wracked the insides of my lungs; my gasping for breath sounded like air being released from the neck of a balloon. Fluids were emerging from places that they shouldn't.

I felt his hesitant fingers squeeze my shoulder. "Honey, don't - It's ok… it's ok…" his voice was breaking, "I forgive you, Bells."

He slowly guided me forward until I collided with his strained chest muscles, his arms locking strong around my back and shoulders, encasing me in warmth and familiarity. "I forgive you."

My tears and saliva soaked into his shirt as I bawled against his ribcage, listening to his arduous breathing, feeling the pounding of his heart, gloriously alive and exultant, yet straining against… something – perhaps the urge to follow my lead and break down as well? Regardless, my outburst was making him perceptibly anxious.

He was dragging his clammy palms down my hair, petting me affectionately, my neck straining under each stroke's repetitive weight. I felt his chin settle on top of my head, our bodies now locked together seamlessly like jigsaw pieces.

I wanted more… I wanted every single part of me to be encompassed by him at that moment, for every last millimeter of his skin to find a piece of mine to call its own.

His jawbone bumped against my crown as he spoke, "How could you think I wouldn't forgive you…Bells… I lov-" he stopped short, suddenly recalling the catalyst of our _last _fight.

I squeezed my eyelids together and gripped the fabric of his shirt desperately. "It's ok Jake, you can say it. Please, please just say it." I whispered the last part so low that I'm sure even he was unable to hear it, but what I really meant was _please, please help me._

"I can't," he sounded so scared.

"Please. I want you to."

He squeezed me, not his usual paralyzing squeeze, but one of a man clinging to a lifeline that was fragile, volatile, unpredictable, but nonetheless imperative to his continued existence.

"I love you," I could _feel _his pure, earnest declaration roll up my cheek and across my temple, over the top of my head and past his lips, resounding deep and shameless over the face of the cliffs.

I _needed_ to hear it… a genuine truth that cemented me to this place, to this life. I needed to know without a trace of incertitude that the world would disintegrate, at least for _one_ person, if I weren't in it. Hearing him say it out loud was enough to make me never want to look back again.

I pulled away from him, my eyes colliding with his, and cupped my hands around his cheeks. I slowly rotated his head to the side, exposing the spot where my palm had once-upon-a-time made contact. I pulled his head down and stood on tiptoe, pressing my lips to that very spot on his cheek and holding them there for a good thirty seconds, allowing the tears to roll off my face and onto his. He was scratchy. My lips curled upwards in a smile against his endearingly unkempt stubble. It felt nice.

I released him and he stared fixedly into my eyes like he'd be able to see my brain matter if he tried hard enough. I was focused on his lips, which parted so slightly that I wouldn't have noticed had I not been staring so intently at them. I closed my eyes, allowing my own lips to separate, and prepared myself for what I only assumed was inevitable. I hadn't a clue whether I wanted it to happen or not.

…But nothing came.

I blinked my eyes open again to see him still standing in the same position, sporting the same expression, mouth agape and wavering with unspoken words.

"I'm sorry too, Bells." He finally spoke. "I should have never said... I never should have called you… pathetic. I was completely over the line. You had every right to-"

"What!? N-no, no, no." I interjected, shaking my head to discount what he'd said "NO, Jake." I was angry now, "I had NO RIGHT. How could you _say _that?" He turned his head away in shame as I denied him the right to apologize. I took a step to the side, twisting my neck to stare him fiercely in the eye, but he didn't waver.

"There were two of us in that room, Bella. I said those words for no reason other than to hurt you. I let you apologize. I forgave you. _Please_, do me a favour and just… forgive _me_."

I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just nodded my head almost indiscernibly. He picked up on it, and a huge smile of relief spread across his tired face. He crossed his powerful arms over his chest, fingers trapped under his biceps as if he were trying to keep them warm, both thumbs pointing up towards his shoulders, his head to the side.

Employing his most flippant tone of voice, he shattered my silence, "And you don't have to flatter yourself, Bells, you didn't make me _cry_," he quipped with an arrogant grin.

"Oh please," I snorted, allowing myself to smile despite the tears' persistence, "you don't have to pretend to be such a _man _all the time. I know you better than that. There were definitely a few tears." I made to punch him playfully on the arm.

He palmed my fist just before it made contact, "Easy there Mohammed Ali, the _last_ time the gloves came off I had to go around for the next few days telling concerned citizens that I'd accidentally tripped and hit my face on the kitchen table. Talk about embarrassing…" he was smiling as he said it, but I still flung him a wretched look.

He squashed my face between his two broad hands, "_Kidding._ Hey, it's okay. Forgive and forget, remember?"

I pouted, my lips already jutting out like a fish's with his two huge hands mashing my cheeks together. "What part of f_orget_ is so hard for you to comprehend, then?" I mumbled as articulately as I could, glowering at him jokingly until he released me.

I sniffled, a few tears still clinging to my face, and then laughed as I noticed the large wet spot on the grey fabric covering his abdomen where my original tears had landed.

"The _one_ time you decide to wear a shirt…" I giggled.

He beamed at me, pinching the fabric at his shoulders between his fingers and lifting the shirt slightly away from his chest "I wore it for you!" he exclaimed proudly. I had my doubts about this. He nodded at my skeptical expression, then stared down in slight disgust. "Can I please… I mean you don't mind if I…?"

"You can take it off, Jake." I yielded to his pleading eyes.

He brought both arms up, elbows bent, hands clawing at the material on his back, defined triceps exposed momentarily, before enthusiastically whipping the shirt forward over his head. Without the excess clothing he looked so much more at ease, so much more in his own… skin.

We started to walk down the grassy hill that led from the side of the cliffs out onto the sand of First Beach. I was still hiccoughing and sniffling as we walked. He shoved his shirt in my face.

"Blow your nose or something, loser." He chuckled, putting his hand on top of my head and thrusting it playfully to the side so I was forced to veer a few steps away from him in a clumsy semi-circle. As always, I was amazed that we could settle back into this light-hearted, comfortable state that we always felt around each other… even after him confessing his love for me an instant ago. I dabbed at my eyes with the shirt. It smelled like him. My insides twisted as I smiled and draped it over my shoulder.

"Hey can I ask you kind of a weird, random question?" I ventured, gazing up at him.

"Always."

"Do you remember _anything _from when I used to come out and visit as a kid? I don't know what it is with my brain but it's like there are some serious Swiss cheese holes in it or something, because I don't remember a single thing..."

He slowed his pace, planning out his next words carefully. "You know how they say that people can only remember the traumatic incidents from their childhood?" He stared at me, begging me with his eyes not to pity him. "Well, I don't know if you've figured this out yet or not but there was a pretty significant period of my childhood that was… well, a little traumatic, so yeah I guess you could say I remember a lot."

I reached over and slid my fingers into his. His eyes darted to our clasped hands, slightly shocked, then traveled up to meet mine. I knew why he was surprised: usually _he _was the one to initiate the hand-holding. I looked at him, trying to let him know that it was fine if he didn't _want_ to summon up those memories. He tore his gaze away from mine and focused on the sand in front of us as we walked.

"I remember you..." he kept his eyes down, "…on this very same beach. The summer a year after she died my dad dragged me down to the beach and you were playing with Rachel and Becca. I wasn't so… animated back in those days. Charlie and Billy would try to get me to play with you guys but all I wanted to do was sit there… and _you_ just wouldn't leave me alone. You came running over with these shells that you'd found and were all like 'JAKE! JAKE! LOOK! A BIVALVE!' or whatever…" He mimicked my youthful obliviousness in his most painfully screechy soprano, swinging our arms as he bounced excitedly. I shook with laughter as he continued.

"I tried to completely ignore you mostly, but you hung around me forever complaining about how the twins wouldn't let you be in their club or something ridiculous, and how you liked me better because I was quiet and didn't say mean things to you."

"Really." I said skeptically, not even raising my voice at the end. As much as I wanted to believe his story, I couldn't picture my eleven-year-old self actually _admitting_ that I preferred spending time with a boy.

He held up his right hand as if he were about to take an oath in court, "Your words, not mine. I'm just telling you what I remember, which, from the sounds of it, is a hell of a lot more than _you_ do…"

I scoffed at him. "Fine, fine, I believe you."

"_Any_ways," he continued, "You'd found this one clamshell that was flawlessly intact… in fact you made me check it to see if there was still anything living inside it, and you kept going on and on and _on _about how perfect it was. I was _this_ close" he held up his fingers an inch apart "to getting up and leaving you sitting there blabbering away in the sand, but then you…" he made a gesture with his free hand, gripping an imaginary item and twisting his wrist violently "…you cracked the damned thing open right on its hinge and…"

He didn't need to finish, "No way…" I cut in, impressed yet dubious.

"Yes way. You actually tossed it at me, I remember that, you didn't hand it nicely, you lobbed it in the sand at my feet like you were embarrassed or something. Then you shoved the other piece in your pocket and took off running in the opposite direction."

I emitted a singular laugh through my nose, picturing my awkward gesture and shaking my head, then I thought about the Mason jar in Jacksonville, wondering if somewhere in its depths…"Did you keep it?" I asked him, "I mean do you still hav-"

I was cut off abruptly by his uncontrollable laughter, which caused me to jump. "Wouldn't that be the cheesiest thing _ever_!?" he boomed, launching into uber-melodrama: "Like one of those horribly sappy movies where some depressed chick has been searching forever for her _long lost love_ – y'know 'cause they were separated by war or some other massive, convenient tragedy - and then they find each other fifty years later because they each have half of a… a… a…" He was tapping his breastbone.

I giggled "Locket?"

"YEAH! Hah!" He laughed loudly "Come on, Bells! I was a temperamental nine year old _boy_, I probably tried to bean a seagull with it about five minutes after you gave it to me." He was trying to make light of it, but I knew that the underlying feelings were stronger than he was letting on.

"But you _remember_ me giving it to you, so what does that say?" I nudged him with my shoulder, my hand still enfolded tightly in his.

He was silent for quite some time. I knew he was still thinking about it, though, because his hand was gripping mine with a new intensity, like he was gearing up to say something important.

"You were the only one who didn't treat me like I was made of glass. The _only_ one. They all told you not to pester me but you just wouldn't listen. You got right up in my stubborn, moody little face and talked your foolish head off, and I barely said a word but you didn't care. I remember that… I remember you_ so _well because you refused to forget about _me_."

I felt the familiar painful knot rise up to the top of my neck. I wasn't sure if he had a smile or tears on his face, but I didn't really need to know. We walked for a little longer, his grip on my hand now relaxed again. I leaned my head against his arm.

"Jake?"

He snapped back to attention, "Mm-hmm?"

"How come you've never said anything before? Why didn't you ever… talk to me about it?"

He stopped walking, turning to face me, staring at me as if I should know. Maybe I already did.

"Bella…" I could see him struggling; he didn't want to tell me the truth and it was obvious. His eyes implored me not to push the subject, but I wasn't letting up.

He sighed in resignation.

"All of this…" he flicked his wrist back and forth several times, gesturing between the two of us, "…It was never about _me_."

He wasn't angry, or bitter. There wasn't even a trace of resentment in his voice or on his face, just acceptance, absolution, and the tiniest ghost of a smile.

"I know," I admitted - for his words, while they stung, were brutally true. "I'm sorry."

He released my hand and aimed his sizeable forefinger at my face. "There's that _word_ again. If I hear it one more time there's gonna be a reverse repeat of last week's smackdown…" He extended all of his fingers out, tapping my cheek gently yet irritably.

"I deserve it," I said with a smile, straightening my spine and squaring my shoulders to him, chin set aloft in preparation for a blow I knew he would never dispense. I was happy that we could now joke about something that was really about as far from funny as you could possibly get, "I'm _sorry, _Jacob Black."

It hadn't been out of my mouth for one second before he rushed at me, shoulder-tackling me right in the gut. I landed on the sand softly, his arm looping around my shoulders, the other hand at the small of my back subtly guiding me down.

He grabbed my ankles and lifted me up so that I was hanging upside-down facing him. I was squealing with laughter, blood pounding through my brain at intense speed. He lifted his arms up into the sky and tilted his head to get a better look at my face. "Just for that you get to spend the rest of the day like David Blaine." He started walking again, a bit awkwardly, but continuing down our momentarily neglected path.

I could barely speak, I was in hysterics: "You're going… to make me do… card tricks for strangers?"

"Wha!? No! Jeez, put down the book every once and a while and turn on a TV, Bells. _Dive of Death_? Dude spent 3 days hanging from his ankles in Central Park? God, what's the point in trying to torture you if you don't even get my references."

He lowered me to the ground and I somersaulted awkwardly out of his grasp, sitting up dizzily to shake the sand from my hair. He plopped down next to me, pulling me by my hand over to his side so that my back lay flush against something… and I became conscious of the fact that we were right at _our_ place, our driftwood tree.

He brought my hand up to his face, pressing the back of it onto his mouth. It wasn't so much like he was kissing my hand, but more like… smelling it. He turned his head to rub his bristly cheek against it, enveloping it in his own huge, warm ones before bringing it down to rest on his thigh, smoothing my fingers out flat with careful, repeated strokes, like a piece of gift-wrap he was determined to save for sentimental reasons. My heart was screaming, I felt like we were right back in his room the moment before things had blown up, and I felt that this time I owed Jake the _real_ truth.

I twisted my body around to look at him, this time not daring to wrench my hand from his." I _want_ to feel better Jake. I want to forget all about him. I really, truly do."

"But you can't." His eyes were fixed on my hand.

"Not right now, no."

"That's ok. I understand."

"I just don't want anything to change… with us." I curled my fingers around his.

"Why would it?"

I wanted to tell him how much it meant for me to hear him say that; to know that I could always rely on him as a constant in my life, but instead I just leaned my head against his chest and drifted off into a daydream, watching the waves crash in measured succession onto the sun-bleached sand.

* * *

"Hey! Hey!" I could hear his smooth, resonant voice coupled with a vague _thok, thok, thok_ somewhere in the vicinity of my left temple. I clicked back into the moment and realized that he had been snapping his large fingers in my ear. He was now flailing his hand spastically in my direct field of vision. I hadn't even noticed. As I focused on his face he arched his eyebrows skyward, flashing me a goofy smile that seemed to say 'hey, there y'are!'

"Jeez," he huffed irreverently, "I'm _trying_ to impart some of my 16 years of _wisdom_ on you, here. Let's focus!"

I couldn't help but hunch over in a laugh. With him sometimes it was like I didn't even have a choice. "I'm sorry, I must have nodded off there." I yawned. "Please… impart away."

"Thank you. God now I feel like an idiot. I've been talking to you for the past _five minutes_ and the whole time you're asleep. At least now I've had some practice with what to say. Just…" He gave me a pathetic looking smile, "…don't make fun of how loser-ish I'm about to sound OK?"

"…'Kay…"

He took a deep breath and turned to face me head-on sitting cross-legged with such proximity that my knees jutted into his shins. He bent his head down, examining his fidgety hands as he attempted to remove some sand from under his fingernails, and I felt a brief, unexplainable moment of apprehension for him. I put my hand on his leg just above the ankle and squeezed it gently, as if this simple gesture would massage away all of his tension. Even though his eyes didn't seem to want to look up, I kept mine locked on the place where his dark lashes grazed the flawless skin of his cheeks.

He finally spoke in a low, resolute tone, "Bella, I've never told anyone… I don't really like to talk about… just _please_ don't take any of this the wrong way. I only want to help you." I squeezed his leg again to urge him onward, because my vocal chords were paralyzed and I couldn't tell him _It's okay. I promise I won't hurt you this time. _

He cleared his throat softly. "Life doesn't always seem _fair_. Some of us have to face challenges that break us in ways that don't seem… fixable. We don't have a choice. We _never_ get a choice…"

He paused, eyes ascending to meet mine with uninhibited intensity, before continuing, "After my mom died I wasn't even remotely prepared for how to handle everything." He pulled in an impossibly deep breath.

"I was so sad that it seemed like speaking, moving, _thinking_ were not only impossible, but…" his eyes darted away from mine briefly as he considered his words, "…pointless. I couldn't explain it to anyone, but there were all these people _constantly_ surrounding me, people trying so hard to make me feel better, and I felt that by being miserable I was failing them too. I was so young and I didn't have the strength to push it all away so I dug this huge hole – I mean a metaphorical hole. I didn't, like, actually get out a shovel and…"

"I get it" I interrupted, gently gripping his wrist to quell his simulated excavation.

He smiled bashfully, "Anyway, for years afterwards I felt like I was looking up at everyone from way down there," he jerked his thumb downwards to indicate the location in the sand where I'd stopped him from digging his imaginary hole, "and the harder they tried to drag me out, the further down I'd want to dig."

I could see him struggling with the memory. It was as if he'd gone right back to that time when he hadn't the slightest clue how to face a world that had turned its back on him so cruelly. His face screwed up, his brows converging to form harsh lines on his normally smooth, dark forehead. He was bracing himself to continue.

I wanted to hug him fiercely, as if I'd never let go until the tide came up and swallowed us both. I wanted to press a hundred reckless kisses all over his beautiful head, whispering in the gaps between that everything was going to be okay, but he already knew this. I was the one that still needed convincing.

"Look," he continued, his gaze lowering, attempting to penetrate the granules between us. He was concentrating so hard, his words coming out slow and with purpose, "I know you think that there's no light ahead of you, but I'm telling you – and I _know_ this because I've been there – that all it takes is one change, one simple thing to set off that change, it doesn't happen all at once, I mean it takes time, but a tiny part of the weight lifts and… you'll suddenly _know _that everything is going to be ok. Trust me… you just have to wait to find your… your… _thing_."

As he delivered these last words he looked as though he was starting to confuse even himself. He let out a small groan-laugh and threw his head backwards so that I could only see his Adam's apple bobbing as he admonished his own verbal shortcomings: "_God_, I'm so bad at this!" His head flopped back down into his open hand, shaking slightly from side to side in humiliation.

"No, I think I get it…" I countered reassuringly, running my tiny pale fingers tenderly up the back of his hand and lacing them through his in an attempt to disengage the iron grip he had on his own skull. My gentleness melted away any remaining traces of his self-criticism, and he allowed me to take his huge right hand in both of mine. I placed it where my ankles crossed and began playing idly with his fingers, flexing and extending them slowly as if I were in a trance, emulating the tenderness with which he'd handled mine earlier.

"…I _think_ I understand."

Yet I felt I was only halfway there. _Something_ had taken hold but the light bulb moment hadn't quite come yet.

"Okay, just one more thing and then I'll shut up," he sighed determinedly.

Once again I felt the intensity of his eyes – those soft yet powerful black eyes– fasten magnetically onto my own. I knew that he didn't even have to verbalize his thoughts to me; he was always able to tell me everything I needed to know with just one look. His hand moved up from my lap to rest on my glowing cheek.

"You don't have to pretend around me. Let it _out_… talk to me about it. Just please don't…" He swallowed. "When I saw you today on that cliff I thought I'd never forgive myself if…"

And then I saw it. Just a hint, but it was there nonetheless – the broken look in his eyes that I'd hoped I'd never have to see again.

"Please don't let go, Bells…" He looked off to the side, blinking rapidly and heaving oxygen into his lungs. "You're not failing _me _by being miserable. I'm not going to give up on you, and I'm not going to treat you like you're made of glass. I _know_ you. You're strong, and sooner or later you _will_ want to get out this trench you've dug for yourself. Something's going to _make_ you want to get out. I guarantee it…okay?"

His hand lingered for one second longer on my jaw line as I nodded almost imperceptibly, and then he was suddenly up, his hand dropping from my face and extending out to help me stand.

"Come on, let's go do something incredibly stupid like hotwire your dad's cruiser and go for a joyride, and then later we can laugh about it like ridiculous idiots." He smiled down at me, a hopeful, joyful, loving smile. My Jacob's smile.

But I was rooted in place. His words, while poorly constructed and hastily delivered, had caused the contents of my mind to lose hold on their surroundings like an errant wind that had hit an unsuspecting pile of leaves. And then, as abruptly as my motorbike – the one that he had built with his own adept hands - had once connected with a helpless tree, it came to me… the light bulb moment. I stared at him, slack-jawed and in utter awe that _he_ could provoke this epiphany.

"It's you..."

He caught my eye cynically, one brow elevated almost to his hairline.

"Say what?"

"It's you, Jake…" I repeated perfunctorily, knowing full well that my reiteration was doing nothing to improve the situation's clarity.

"…You're… my thing."

One second of stunned silence passed before he exhaled amusedly, turning towards the approaching tide and unexpectedly emitting a loud snort of laughter. The smile that I could see spreading across his profile was one of mixed disbelief and vindication. His shoulders continued to roll with restrained laughter as he slowly brought his eyes back towards mine, taking in every last inch of me like I was the key to all the unanswered questions in his strange, twisted little universe.

I let out a sharp breath and scoffed, "What?!" My laughter mirrored his as I kicked my leg out in the general direction of his shins, not actually intending to make direct contact, but signifying the light-hearted frustration brought on by his mirth.

"Nothing, it's just…" He looked down again, shoving his hands in his pockets, his bare toes twisting deeper into the sand. He released one more quick burst of laughter, "Hah… that's just… those are probably the three most romantic words anyone's ever said to me in my entire life." He chuckled as he said it, finally raising his eyes to find mine once again.

"In your _entire_ sixteen years of life?" I teased.

"In my entire sixteen years of life." His smile was unending.

I soaked it in. I breathed it. I wanted to sit there in the sand and be warmed by his smile forever… but I knew that I couldn't. I had to keep moving forward… for both of us.

"Well, thanks, I try," I said as I grinned up at him, extending my hand upward to indicate that his help was now warranted.

As he hauled me to my feet somewhat ungracefully, I could hear the laughter once again rumbling in his chest, and I felt it reverberate against my side as he pulled me close to walk back to my truck, his long arm hanging casually over my shoulder.

"Seriously, it's not that funny!" I griped scornfully, encircling my own arm behind him and squeezing his waist, swatting him playfully in the gut with the other hand, "I was _trying_ to be sincere!" I craned my neck at an unsafe angle to get a better look at him.

"You're right, it isn't funny," he said, still smiling so wide I thought his face might split. "But you want to know something that is?" I felt his cheek connect with the top of my head, his soft words coming out muffled, his face smashed into my hair.

"You were mine, too."

* * *

**AN:**

**Finito! Yay! I hope you guys enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. I feel like it's been trapped inside my head forever. Ah, liberation!**

**So I'll need your guys' suggestions on this last bit. I'm going away for almost a month's vacation at the end of the week, but if I can get enough requests for an epilogue, then I'll try to pound a short one out before I go. (wait… can you have an epilogue without a prologue? For the sake of this story let's say "Sure!") I have a vague idea for this epilogue, just a bit of silliness and some loose ends tied up, but... if you think the story is fine as it is then I'll just leave it and I'll try to start up a new story once I return from vacation. Thanks so much for the wonderful reviews, guys!!!**


	6. Epilogue

**Yikes! I leave on my vacation in… um… about seven hours! Yay, procrastination!**

**I can't say enough how much it meant to read all of your wonderful feedback for chapter 5. I hope this final bit succeeds in rounding everything off nicely. I added a bit of a twist just to set it apart from the actual body of the story. **

**Enjoy!!**

* * *

EPILOGUE

"Yeah it's your starter all right... gotta be replaced. I can probably get you a new one and have it installed it in three days, four tops."

_God_, I _loved_ the sound of my own confident words. So professional… so… grown up. Mr. Fix It to the rescue. I don't care how arrogant that sounds. At _this _moment, on _this _day there was absolutely nothing that could take the wind out of my sails. I was invincible.

She'd said she needed me, not two hours ago. Those very words had actually come out of her mouth: _I. Need. You. _

…And not just for fixing the big red hunk of junk, either.

I carefully removed my rapidly-swelling head from the mouth of the beast, extracting my grease-covered fingers from the Chevy's inner workings and rubbing them together, distractedly wondering where the hell she'd put that shirt that I'd gotten rid of. I wiped my fingers on my arm instead, absently continuing my prognosis: "You're lucky we caught this before the damn thing _completely_ bit the dust. I mean, the truck'll be out of commission for the next couple days, but at least you didn't end up stranded somewhere, right? Anyways, you can take the Rabbit for now, I'll just use the bike to…"

I suddenly got the impression that I was directing my spiel at no one; she hadn't spoken a word in what seemed like forever.

"Earth to Bells… are you even _listening _to me?"

All that met my ears in response was a miserable moan.

I rolled my eyes, circling the pickup's front end and leaning my hip against the grill, staring her down amusedly. She was still standing hunched over by the car, head slanted adorably to one side, smoothing her careful little fingers across the now-inverted driver's side door.

"Jake… you must want to _kill_ me right now."

She turned around and there it was… the look that I'd only seen about a bazillion times: the '_why do you continue to endure me when I constantly ruin just about everything in your life?'_ look.

I _hated_ that look.

"It's just a dent, Bells. No biggie. Actually it's quite small, really. I can fix it later."

It wasn't, and I couldn't. At least not without doing some serious Googling and possibly shelling out a decent-sized wad of cash for some tools first. I knew next to _nothing_ about bodywork.

I knew I should've at least tried to convince her to let _me_ back the truck in.

There had been plenty of room for two vehicles in the garage, but somehow Bella had managed to kindly introduce her rear fender to the _only_ other object of any remote value in here... my newest most prized possession, the Rabbit's eventual replacement.

I hadn't thought that any overbearing supervision would be necessary. All she had to do was ease the monster inside…

It hadn't occurred to me that her clumsiness wasn't limited to walking and running.

Still, the good news was that the truck was completely unharmed. The bad news was… I didn't give a shit about the aesthetic quality of the truck.

_If it were anyone else you'd rip off their arms and sell them on the black market for collision repair funds. Go on and just admit it, you think it's fucking cute that she accidentally wounded your car. Hell, she could run YOU over and you'd probably just apologize for getting in her way and then politely ask her to maybe, if it's not too much trouble, move her tire off your sternum. You're pitiful, man._

La, la, la, la. Not listening.

Her still-remorseful voice temporarily suppressed my conscience's self-humiliation tactic, snapping my mind back into the moment, "Yeah, but Jacob, it's going to take you a while to fix this…" She fingered the chipped paint once more before turning to face me and closing her eyes, scrunching her entire face up in regret and frustration. For once in my life I didn't want to know what she was thinking.

"Come here, Bells."

Slowly, cynically, her eyes eased open, her mouth still fixed in a scrunched-up sulk.

"Bella, come HERE… or I'll make you learn how to fix your _own_ starter."

She shuffled her sneakers feebly across the concrete until we were face to… well, chest. Her chin didn't tilt back even one inch as she grumpily flicked her eyes up to connect with mine, clearly unimpressed with my oh-so-difficult-to-comply-with demands.

I cheerily exposed my teeth, gripping her head in both hands like a basketball and placing my thumbs over both corners of her lips, forcing them upwards.

"Smile, Bella. For the love of God, the two of us have done nothing but wallow for an entire week. As of right now I'm making it illegal to be miserable." She scoffed, twisting her head in a hilariously futile attempt to escape.

I assumed my best mock-stern glare, "Don't _make_ me take you downtown. I happen to know the Chief of police."

That did it. The muscles in her face relaxed and she started to giggle.

Thank you, God.

She brought her hands up and clamped them over my wrists, yanking them out to the sides and away from her face.

"At least let me _pay _you for it-"

Jeez… couldn't she take a _hint?_ Let it go.

"You can pay me by helping me pass my math final next month…"

This counteroffer was a no-brainer for me... there were _two_ benefits: spend time with Bella, and keep Billy from disowning me for being an idiot slacker.

"Jaaaake… come on I feel really _bad_ about this. Just let me pay you-"

"No, Bells! You think I'm kidding about the math but I'm not! I'm only at, like, thirty percent or something." I turned my attention back to the inside of the truck, sliding out the dipstick – may as well check _that_ too while I was in here.

"Don't exaggerate, Jacob. The only morons who do _that_ bad in class are the ones who don't even show up…"

I turned my head slightly away from her unconvinced face and angled my gaze upwards, suddenly enthralled with a tangle of cobwebs hanging from the ceiling in the corner, "Yeah, ummm...."

"Jacob Black!"

"What!? This week _sucked. _Besides, I only skipped the boring classes." She was frowning at me, clearly displeased. I moodily flopped my head backwards, the base of my skull bumping against the top of my spine, my mouth lolling open as I griped sourly, "Come onnnnn, Bells. I had better things to do anyways." I gestured towards the car in the corner.

This immediately halted her reprimanding. Guilt once again splashed across her features as she took a step back to fully scrutinize her victim. "Speaking of which, what _is_ this thing?" she muttered.

"_This…" _I aimed the dipstick at it, sauntering pompously over to the passenger's side opposite her, "…is a 1984 Mustang GT turbo." I have to admit I must have looked like a bit of a knob… like I was teaching a class for the mechanically-challenged…

…_Good afternoon everyone, I'm Professor Black and welcome to Automotive Appreciation 101…_

She scrunched up her nose, "_This_ thing? For _real_? Doesn't look like any Mustang _I've_ ever seen."

"It's third generation." I tapped the hood three times, a few drops of finely-aged motor oil transferring from the thin strip of metal in my hand onto the faded, slightly-oxidized surface.

She still appeared nonplussed, "That means _absolutely_ nothing to me. It looks like a crappy version of that thing from _Back to the Future_… only without all the time-travel stuff attached to it."

I let out a sharp, air-horn blast of laughter, astounded by her blatant obliviousness. "What!? Aw… _no_! Are you _high_, Bells? It looks absolutely NOTHING like a De Lorean… Those things are _total_ novelty items, plus they only get, like, a hundred and thirty horsepower on a 2.8-liter eng-"

Uuuuuugghhh…" She waved her hands around her head like she was trying to get rid of an angry hornet. "Never mind! Forget I asked!" I pouted shamelessly, but she didn't let up, "P_uh-leeeease,_ Jake, I can't take it anymore! I've been forced to endure your endless car jargon ever since I mentioned the damned starter… an hour and a half ago! "

I didn't waver. I wiped the three small drops of oil off the hood with my hand, once again flicking my thumb across my now-even-dirtier fingertips in an unsuccessful attempt to clean them off.

"Seriously Bella, you've wounded me. This 'crappy thing' is going to be my greatest achievement to date. You can't judge it from the outside right now, it's what's on the _inside_ that counts." I flashed her my most alluring smile and grasped my chest dramatically with the palm of my hand. "I just started working on it this week. It's been my… distraction. I bought it from a guy in Port Angeles who's had it sitting in his front yard for almost a _year_. A hundred and fifty _bucks_! I robbed him blind!"

I was glowing.

The look on her face suggested that she wasn't convinced I'd come off better in this arrangement.

"Where'd you get all this money from anyways?"

"Quil and I have been clearing these massive, dying cedar hedges out of his uncle's backyard. We chopped the trees down for a hundred, then he paid us another hundred to truck all that crap away, _and_ he gave us forty bucks for gas, AND we're selling the firewood to Billy for _another_ hundred." I grinned broadly, nodding my head with unabashed self-pride.

"You're becoming quite the little entrepreneur there aren't you?" she ribbed me.

"Entrepreneur slash mechanic slash gargantuan wolfman. I ordered those business cards last week, they should be arriving any day now."

I meandered back over to the truck and replaced the dipstick.

"Have you had your oil changed _at all_ since I gave you this old beater?"

"Um… no. Should I have?"

I sighed audibly, crossing the floor in two long strides and snatching a clean rag off the workbench, "I'll do it now."

"Fine, but I'm not gonna sit here and watch, as riveting as it's sure to be. Can I maybe use your bathroom?"

"Hell no. Go in the bushes." Her eyelids constricted angrily. I laughed. "Well, why do you feel the need to _ask_ me?"

"It's called common courtesy, Jacob. You should look into it some time. It involves things like _noticing_ that I get bored out of my tree when you start blathering on and on and _ON_ about starter drives and wheel alignment and… garberator gaskets-"

"_Car_buretor," I interrupted, "C-A-R……B… uhhh…" I chewed distractedly on my right thumbnail, a nervous habit that I adopted every time I knew I was fighting a losing battle, "…E?" _God Damn it_. "Um…R…? Uhhhhh… _shit_."

"Maybe I _will_ help you with that homework after all," she said, pulling the rag from my hand and reaching up, swabbing it over my mouth a few times to remove the engine grease I'd just inadvertently deposited there. I held my breath as she placed it back in my hand and swiped her thumb across my upper lip one last time for good measure. She patted the side of my arm twice before spinning around and strolling breezily out the door leaving me frozen, completely immobile, looking like I'd just been shot in the chest.

I'm not going to lie; it took me a good minute or two to get my bearings back, and even then I had to study the cloth in my hand dreamily for a few seconds before I remembered what I'd been planning to do in the first place.

Right. Socket wrench.

I rotated slowly, allowing my eyes to jump from the workbench to the wall, to the other wall, to the other wall, to…

Wait… where the hell-?

My muscles seized. I wanted to hurt something.

I barged into the house, pissed off and trying to convince myself that it was okay to use Billy's old set… if they were indeed still tossed in that decrepit box in the laundry room.

As I blazed past my half-opened bedroom door I caught a glimpse of… Bella? What the?

She was standing sort of inside my closet, staring into space but not moving. I leaned against the doorframe amusedly.

"I think everything in there's too big for you."

I startled the crap out of her.

"Christ, Jake. Warn me next time." She clutched at her chest. "Wait… are you done _already_?"

My head clunked noisily onto the door frame, "_No,"_ I spat, "some stupid punk stole my _entire_ green tool case right out of the garage today. It was there yesterday. Those damned socket wrenches alone cost me like two hundred bucks… well, they cost _Billy_ two hundred bucks."

"Oh right…" she looked a little shamefaced, "it's right there." She pointed at the wall below my window.

I eyed her worriedly, like she'd just told me she was planning to go live out the rest of her days in a rainbow-coloured cardboard box on the moon.

"…No, see you're thinking of my _invisible_ wrenches. I meant the real ones."

She gave me a derisive grin, "Other side of the wall, Jake," and swished past me out the door.

I went over to my window, pushing it wide open and jutting my neck out over the ledge. Sure enough, there it was. I couldn't have been more confused.

"Is there something you'd like to tell me-"

And then I turned around and realized why she'd been in my closet.

Tacked up on the inside of the door right at _my_ eye level – she must have stretched up and stuck it there on purpose – was a postcard or… no wait, a photo…

I squinted my eyes and moved closer, a smile spreading across my face, increasing in size as I gained proximity.

Holy shit. No way.

I laughed, shaking my head. No wonder she sometimes found me so annoying. It had been engrained in me since childhood.

The picture pretty much encapsulated the two of us. Even though Bella's face bore the slightly disturbed expression of an obsessive-compulsive neat-freak sizing up an overlooked speck of dust, she nonetheless didn't look angry or upset. She just looked… surprised that I was even there.

If the photo had shown the two of us just standing next to each other smiling politely it wouldn't have been _nearly _this good.

…This was _us._

We weren't perfect... not by a long shot, but we were _here_. Together. That was enough for now.

"I thought it was cute."

I flinched, not noticing right away that she was standing in the doorway, our positions precisely reversed from two minutes ago. Her flushed cheeks were raised upwards in an impeccable smile that was all at once peaceful, hopeful, and affectionate.

I sniffed casually, regarding the image again with a genuine smile of my own.

"Damned straight it is."

* * *

**Wow, writing from Jake's POV is… different. Maybe I'll try it again some time… hopefully soon! **


End file.
